scrapbook of history
by wild wolf free17
Summary: collection of drabbles, mostly about Methos; crossovers abound
1. the fear of thunder and the sword

**Title**: the fear of thunder and the sword

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Milton

**Warnings**: spoilers for the Horsemen arc

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 220

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Any, any, "I have walked through many lives, some of them my own / And I am not who I was"

* * *

After five thousand years—and more, _so much more_—he has gone by more names, lived more lives, than anyone else can even begin to contemplate. He has been a conquering warlord, a high king, a supreme emperor, a chief and a priest, a servant and a slave, a prisoner and a toy, a shopkeeper and tavern owner, an inventor and a painter, a beggar and a thief. He was even the Pope for awhile. He has been a part of the history of every existing country, and many which no longer exist. His place in the history books is assured, though only he knows when he canters across the pages, sword in hand.

Always a sword, though he's mastered every weapon forged and fashioned, every weapon from a stone to the most sophisticated computer-guided missile.

He does not remember his name as a man, before he died and became Death. He does not remember the life he lived then, though he recalls perfectly every life since then. Whoever that man was, Methos knows that he could not have imagined what he would become, who he would be, the power he would wield.

Only he, Methos—_Death_—, can understand. There is no one else in the world close enough to be his equal to comprehend. Not anymore, and never again.


	2. the name died before the man

**Title**: the name died before the man

**Fandom**: Highlander/Magnificent Seven ATF AU

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from AE Housman

**Warnings**: AU

**Pairings**: none stated

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**:360

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander/Mag 7, Methos/Ezra, someone he knew a long time ago has just walked back into his life

* * *

"We'll be bringing in a linguist to translate," Travis says, concluding the meeting. "Get back to work."

Ezra waits until his teammates have left, rereading the last page in his folder, and then he says, "You know, of course, that I could translate. Babylonian is my native tongue, after all."

"I know," Travis says. "But that would ruin your cover this life, wouldn't it?"

Grinning, Ezra rises, closing the folder. He gives Travis a sloppy salute as he walks out the meeting room.

o0o

It is a peculiar case, gunrunners using a form of Babylonian to pass information. Ezra had recognized the language immediately, but it took three days before the ATF could identify it.

The linguist is named Adam Matthews. Ezra senses him before he sets foot in the building.

Methos walks out the elevator dressed in jeans and a red shirt. Travis greets him, calls the team, and leads the way to the conference room.

o0o

"Dr. Matthews," Travis says later, after the case is closed and the gunrunners caught, their operation in tatters and their leader dead in a shoot-out, "please, allow me to take you to Denver's premier restaurant."

"Of course, Agent Travis," Methos says. "Right now, though, I'd really enjoy a piece of cheesecake. Do you know where I could find one?"

Ezra saunters over, declaring, "I know this little diner with the best cheesecake in the state. If our illustrious leader gives me the afternoon off, I can show you."

Travis and Chris share a look. "You did good work for this case, Ezra," Chris says. "Take the afternoon."

o0o

Ezra orders the cheesecake to go. He and Methos eat it at Ezra's dinner table, speaking in a dozen different languages, of people long dead and places long lost to time.

The last time they saw each other, the United States did not exist. Much has changed since then.

"Are you having fun, Ezekiel?" Methos asks.

Grinning, Ezra nods. "They're a good team, Methos." He pauses before adding, "Better than yours."

Methos scoffs. "We ruled the world, kid. All yours does is clean up the streets."

Ezra laughs, standing to pour himself a glass of milk.


	3. six words

**Title**: six words

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: implied Methos/Duncan

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 30

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Methos, the end

* * *

As the oldest, he's the best.  
In the end... there's only one.  
Duncan or death, he chooses Death.  
He's never regretted winning so much.  
Winning the Game is a loss.


	4. ritual and grief

**Title**: ritual, and a grief

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic; mentions of character death

**Pairings**: could be implied Methos/Duncan

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 65

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Curling iron

**Notes**: written before I saw any of season 6, so either future!fic or AU

* * *

The day they bury Joe, Duncan sits in one of his kitchen chairs and hands Methos a pair of scissors.

"All of it," he says.

Carefully and gently, with one caress to the back of Duncan's head, where his skull meets his throat, Methos begins cutting Duncan's hair. As he works, Methos hums a lament older than religion and neither of them mentions the tears.


	5. endless

**Title**: endless

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: none

**Pairing**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 45

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: yearbook

* * *

There is no yearbook in the world that should rightfully contain a picture of Methos. Even the colleges he's attended have no photographs of him. Every time he's published, someone else's face adorns the author's page.

It's a tiresome game, but so much of immortality is.


	6. story time

**Title**: story time

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: some mocking of Greek mythology

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 150

**Point of view**: first

**Prompt**: Labyrinth

* * *

Theseus was a fool. But then, so were many of the so-called and self-claimed heroes. That's why they died long ago while I survive.

Oh, don't give me that look, MacLeod. You asked for a story.

As I was saying—thanks, Joe, I'd like a beer—Theseus was a fool. He'd've never gotten out of that maze without a healthy dose of help, and forget killing a monster. Takes so much more than brute strength.

Luckily for him—and Athens—I was there. Been tossed in to feed Asterius a few days before the annual sacrifice. Minos had no sense of humor, believe you me.

Anyway, Theseus was a fool. He only succeeded as a king because I hung around so long offering sage advice. Voice of the gods, I was. And what he'd do the moment I left? Went and kidnapped a princess, that's what!

Bloody fool.


	7. of kings the last

**Title**: of kings the last, for of his reign shall be no end

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Milton

**Warnings**: blasphemy? broad-scope timeline?

**Pairings**: none stated

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 230

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: scrapbook

* * *

Methos has journals written in languages that had no names and caches hidden across the world that historians and would archeologists would kill to see. He remembers days before civilization, when gods walked the Earth and magic changed the landscape. He was alive when mammoths migrated and survived a flood that destroyed almost all life.

He says five thousand years because it is simple. For the watchers and immortals, it is believable—myths speak of long ago, and he is a myth. A flood and a garden, in so many legends, and he was before both. He knew the world then, and he remembers, and he knows why so few ancients made it to this civilized day. How do you reconcile existing before God, any god?

But Methos is a survivor. He adapts. He remembers the cold and the giants, and he sometimes dreams of the great and terrible lizards that used to rule the world, and he wonders, waking with a shudder, just what he is. What he has been. What he has yet to be.

The children play their Game of lightning and blood, and the oldest living creature watches the sun, thinking for a moment that he might outlast even it.

But that is surely only a passing fancy, and he turns from the window to grab his current journal. He'll write in Atlantian today.


	8. you are gone, my stranger

**Title**: you are gone, my stranger

**Fandom**: Highlander/White Collar

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: post-series for Highlander, AU for White Collar

**Pairings**: none stated

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 355

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: White Collar, Neal, it isn't real

* * *

For a long time, he thought it was a dream.

Then he hoped it was simply a delusion.

He knows better now, even if he wishes he could wake up screaming.

o0o

His name hasn't always been Neal. He hasn't always been a liar and a thief.

For a long time, he was something much worse.

o0o

He remembers swords and fire and blood. He knows exactly why he doesn't like guns, and he also knows why he's so good with them.

It's not a dream, this cage in New York.

It is a fantasy, an escape he wished for, dreamt for, hoped for. And now he has it, but _he remembers_-

o0o

Moz found him wandering the streets, covered in blood that (was)n't his, a sword cradled in his arms.

Moz thought he was brand-new, an infant in need of guidance, lost and lonely.

Only two of those were right.

o0o

It's been nice, pretending. Fun and easy. A rest he sorely needed, if that last challenge was any indication.

He's ready to go home.

But he isn't ready to leave Peter, El, Mozzie, or June. He isn't ready to take up his sword again, to kill all comers.  
But he doesn't want to die, either. And he doesn't want headhunters going after his family to force his hand.

o0o

He doesn't say goodbye, doesn't give any hint that it's his last day as Neal Caffrey, and doesn't take anything but his sword (returned by Mozzie) before he goes.

He was a student of War, and War learned from Death, and the Old Man is waiting for him. Out of the game for almost a decade, things have changed and he only trusts his teacher's teacher to reintroduce him.

Mozzie is awesome, and he was lucky to have been found by him. But Moz is not a warrior. He's escaped detection for centuries and Neal (not for much longer) doesn't want to reveal him to the world. He owes Moz and he'll protect him from what he can.

So he sheds Neal Caffrey and goes to the nearest safe-house, and waits for Methos.


	9. To you, I'd give the world

**Title**: To you, I'd give the world

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: spoilers for Methos

**Pairings**: pre-Methos/Duncan

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 140

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Indigo

* * *

One of the few pleasures left to a man five thousand years old—and probably older, there's so much he can't remember—is to watch sunrise or sunset, whichever he's awake for. Each dawn and dusk in his memory is unique. No two have ever been the same. After watching people repeat themselves for millennia, sunrises feel cleansing. He is bathed by light, feels it all the way to his tired bones and aching soul. It doesn't kindle a fire in him, but it keeps him going long enough to meet the child called Duncan MacLeod. And Duncan—

He is bright enough to strike a spark in the oldest man alive and Methos stops merely surviving. For the first time in centuries, he wakes excited to be alive.

Maybe in a few years, he'll show the child responsible how to appreciate a sunrise.


	10. the time of youth was fled

**Title**: the time of youth was fled

**Fandom**: The Losers movieverse/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from William Blake

**Warnings**: AU

**Pairings**: implied Cougar/Jensen

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 435

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Losers/Highlander, Jensen & Clay(∨ Roque), #103. My commander is not old enough to have fought in the Civil War, and I should stop implying that he did.

**Notes**: no actual Highlander characters show up here, sorry. I like to think Methos was Jensen's teacher, though.

* * *

As the youngest of their team, Jensen got a lot shit about being a kid, about being an infant, about listening to his elders. Once he got comfortable enough, he started calling them old men, grandpa, and asking if they needed hearing aids.

When they got paired up with another group for a mission, Jensen was reported for in-field insubordination, but Clay dealt with it before Jensen ever learned. He'd just gotten the kid trained up right and wasn't about to risk losing the best tech he'd ever had.

Jensen was smart, an excellent shot, and survived whatever got thrown at him. All of them had been on missions where they were sure he died, but then he'd show up with a last minute save and not a scratch on him, any blood the enemy's. Kid was a goddamned walking miracle.

And then came the second time they met Max. Pooch down with a shattered kneecap, Cougar gutshot, Aisha with two knives in her abdomen, and Clay on his knees gasping for air as Max's new right-hand-man chokes him.

And Jensen, already dead, on the floor.

But then Jensen is up, two guns in hand and picking off Max's men. And Jensen isn't smiling, isn't joking, is moving like a predator, quick and silent, and both guns are pointed at Max's face. Clay's free, catching his breath, and Jensen orders, "Help Cougar and Aisha."

And Max's eyes are wide and he says, "You _have_ to show me how you did that."

Now Jensen smiles, and it's the most terrifying thing Clay's ever seen.

"I had hoped," Jensen says, "that I'd have time to play with you." He shrugs, drops the smile, and pulls both triggers.

One to the heart, Clay notes, one to the head. And then twelve more, six from each gun, and Jensen turns to their team.

"I'll explain later," he mutters, shoving Pooch out of the way so that he can look at Cougar.

They all survive, and get out of Max's underground lair just before it catches fire. And when Jensen explains, once they're safe and hidden, Clay listens in shock, not sure if be believes.

Because Jensen says he's not a kid. Says he's older than America, older than the English language itself.

But it does explain a great deal, and whatever it is, it saved them.

And when Clay calls him _kid_, when Pooch says Jensen's still his brother, when Aisha shrugs, and when Cougar reaches up to cup Jensen's cheek, Jensen smiles and relaxes and starts to babble about some technical shit, and Clay knows they'll be just fine.


	11. Maker, remake, complete

**Title**: Maker, remake, complete

**Fandom**: Highlander/White Collar

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic for both shows

**Pairings**: none stated

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 710

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: White Collar/Highlander. Neil, Methos, Duncan, Joe. "Hey, Uncle." "Uncle?" "He was my teacher's brother. Hence, uncle." Kronos was Neil's teacher.

* * *

The way Adam's fingers clench around his glass for a moment lets Joe know that someone's on the way. A few moments later, Mac lifts his head, and about ten seconds after that, a fancy kid saunters in.

Joe's pretty sure no one dressed so nice has ever been in the place before.

Sharp blue eyes take in everything: the few patrons here so early, Mac, and the Old Man masquerading as a kid just outta grad school.

He settles next to Adam with a grin and his act is almost as good as Adam's. If Joe hadn't seen Mac and Adam's reactions, even as a watcher, he'd have been fooled.

He orders the same thing Adam's drinking and seems content to sit there all day, nursing a single glass. Joe wonders if he knows what he is; he hasn't reacted to Mac or Adam at all.

"He's dead, you know."

The words are so soft Joe barely hears them. He isn't even sure Adam's spoken until the kid's fingers clutch his glass so hard it shatters.

"He died because I betrayed him," Adam continues, eyes on his own glass as the kid picks shards out of his palm. "The last thing he saw was me taking Silas' head."

"And Caspian?" the kid asks quietly, no emotion in his voice. His gaze stays on his skin as it knits.

"Lost his head."

The kid nods and looks up to smile at Joe. "Another, please? I'll pay for the glass, of course."

Adam gives the kid a fond, exasperated glance that Joe's sure he himself used to give Adam, back before he knew about the Old Man. "Put it on my tab, Joe," he says. "And toss in some food for the brat."

The kid rolls his eyes (and Joe seriously needs to stop thinking about him as _the kid_, because he clearly knows about the Horsemen, which makes him _old_).

"I'm Neal Caffrey," he says brightly. "And an FBI agent is going to rush through that door any minute now," he adds, turning his head to look at Mac. "Please don't try to attack him or anything." Looking back at Adam, he confides, "Peter worries about me."

Adam laughs. "He wants to strangle you, you mean."

Neal's grin makes him look ten years younger, which is quite the feat since he already looked maybe twelve. "Well, yeah."

"Before your keeper arrives," Adam says, gesturing for Mac and Joe to lean in close, "allow me to introduce my darling nephew." Joe shares a glance at Mac, who shrugs, just as in the dark. Hopefully this secret revealed won't blow up in their faces.

(And he mentally pauses for a moment, to wonder if Methos has been fiddling around with the Chronicles for years. He doesn't recognize this kid, not from a description or pictures, but he's got to be somewhere near Cassandra's age.)

"This is Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod and his Watcher, the delightful Joe Dawson."

Neal shakes both their hands. "Thank you for looking after Uncle for me," he says. "It's been awhile since I saw him."

A man whose bearing and outfit scream FBI storms in, arrowing straight for Neal. Joe bustles away for a moment, letting them have the illusion of privacy, and Adam clearly hears every word, if his grin is anything to go by.

"Special Agent Burke," the FBI guy finally says, looking to Joe. "My consultant, Neal Caffrey."

Joe moves back in and asks, "Somethin' I can help you with, agent?"

"I hope so," Burke says.

o0o

Later that night, after Joe turns the bar over to Mike and makes his way to Mac's, as they're discussing this turn of events and Joe confesses he searched for any mention of Neal in the chronicles, Mac pauses mid-sentence and turns his head to the door.

Joe is unsurprised when Adam lets himself in, Neal at his heels.

"The brat's agreed to play Truth or Dare, if you want," Adam says, sprawling on Mac's couch, not caring that Mac had already been settled there. "I'm all for it, myself."

Mac rolls his eyes and Joe tries to discreetly hide his notebook.

Neal grins, though, settling himself next to Adam, and Joe figures, _what the hell_.


	12. I read of that glad year

**Title**: I read of that glad year which once had been

**Fandom**: White Collar/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: AU for Neal's back-story; post-series for Highlander (and ignores all sequel films, as in I totally forgot about the one I've seen)

**Pairings**: Methos/Neal, Neal/Kate, mentions of Peter/Neal(/Elizabeth)

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 1840

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: portrait

**Notes**: originally meant to be a short drabble. It got away from me.

* * *

When Neal was twenty, just before Kate and long after Moz, he met a fascinating individual at the Louvre. They were both admiring the _Mona Lisa_ and Neal said to the man next to him, "da Vinci is magnificent."

"He truly was a master," the man replied. "A genius yet to be equaled." And then, when Neal turned to face him, the man continued, expounding on da Vinci—everything Neal could think to wonder and many things he'd have never considered.

When the man wound down, flushing and lifting a hand to the back of his neck in embarrassment, Neal smiled at him. "I'm Neal Holden," he said. "Do you know as much about Michelangelo?"

"Adam Mateo," his newest friend replied. "And yes."

They spent the rest of the day together, discussing the greatest artists of all time. Neal learned that Adam had recently graduated Stanford with a PhD in philosophy and he'd inherited his great-uncle's fortune. "The old man had chased away everybody else," Adam explained with a wave of his hand. "I was the only one who visited anymore, so he left me everything. And now I'm wandering the world, seeing all the wonders."

Adam's accent was a mixture of several American regions, much like Neal's own. And based on their discussions, Neal felt like they were old friends.

After supper, which Adam insisted on paying for, claiming he had too much money, he invited Neal back to his room. "Just to talk," he said. "It's been a while since I found anyone as interesting as you."

Neal studied him. Even before Mozzie's warnings, Neal knew the dangers. He couldn't remember a time he didn't know them, hadn't experienced firsthand how _dangerous_ the world was.

But Adam didn't feel like a threat. He was just a guy after a good time, same as Neal. A guy who appreciated beauty and was able to keep up with Neal.

"Sure," Neal replied.

o0o

They spent a week together, traveling around France. Adam knew places that weren't mobbed by tourists and helped Neal with his French. He sketched Adam in a variety of poses and told him about his plans for the future. Adam offered him advice, taught him a few tricks of the con that Neal was sure even Mozzie didn't know. (Neal would've guaranteed that Adam wasn't just a Doctor of Philosophy. No way in Hell.)

And finally, it was time for Neal to go home, to Moz and their newest partner, Kathryn Moreau.

"I wish you luck, Neal," Adam said, and, "I expect great things of you."

o0o

About a decade later, Neal was caged by the FBI, Kate was dead, and Moz had pieces of sage advice interspersed with ideas for future jobs.

The only good things about staying in New York—besides June's loft, which was to die for—were Peter and Elizabeth. No one except Kate, Moz, and a man in France for a week over ten years ago had ever kept up with Neal. Neal still liked Peter, even after he put Neal in jail—yes, he was keeping Peter for awhile. And Elizabeth was simply amazing.

And then came the op with Peter that led to Neal being kidnapped (at gunpoint!) and driven somewhere while blindfolded and a punch to the head that had him on the ground and—

Neal woke up moments before the FBI swooped in and he'd never felt better. The bad guys were arrested or shot resisting arrest and he went home and the second he set foot on the stairs, he had a headache. It was weird, too: a low-grade buzzing he couldn't ignore, unlike anything else he'd experienced.

When he made it to his door, Mozzie met him and said, "Damnit, Neal, this was supposed to happen while I was there."

o0o

So, yeah. Moz cut open both their hands to prove it, but Neal had apparently died and come back to life.

"I've known since I met you, Neal," Moz said. "I could feel it. That buzz in the back of your head—it's how our kind recognize each other."

Neal looked at him, studied his face. "How old are you?" he asked quietly, unsure if he was more hurt or angry that Moz had stayed around so long only because Neal was _immortal_.

"Six hundred, more or less," Moz said. "And Neal, I didn't seek you out just because you were like me. I would've taken you under my wing no matter what." His eyes were sincere and Neal relaxed. "You were so full of potential, Neal, that I had to stay. And you've become a master. In six centuries, I've met hundreds of thieves, of con-men, and only one has _ever_ been as good as you. Better, even. He helped me in my first decade. Antony was my teacher; I'll call him in the morning, see if he'll swing by."

Moz kept talking about Antony and the Game and how Neal needed to take up the sword, but Neal checked out of the conversation and fell asleep on the couch.

He woke in the morning to a headache and Moz cooking breakfast.

Apparently, it wasn't a dream. Damn.

o0o

For the next week, Neal went to work like nothing had changed. Mozzie moved in and provided a sword, as well as the most basic of lessons.

"I'm good enough," he said, "but I've survived by knowing when to run. Antony will either teach you himself or call in a favor and get you taught by the best, a boy scout named MacLeod."

o0o

Late Monday night, Neal jerked awake when a new buzz hit him. For a few moments it felt like a superbuzz, hammering him down. Then it lessened, becoming only a slight hum.

Neal went to the main room, where Mozzie already was, practically bouncing on his feet. "He's here," Moz announced unnecessarily.

Neal shook his head, wondering if he'd imagined the superbuzz. "Moz…" he began.

Mozzie correctly interpreted his confusion and said, "Antony was just letting me know it's him."

When a knock came at the door, Moz opened it and Neal stood to the side as his teacher's teacher walked in.

Neal blinked and Adam smiled.

"Am I—" he asked. "Adam, what?"

Moz looked from Adam to Neal. "Antony, you already met Neal?"

"Yes, Marcus," he replied. "About a decade ago, Adam Mateo spent a lovely week with Neal Holden."

o0o

Ten years and Adam hadn't aged a day. Six centuries and Neal guessed Mozzie could say the same.

Looking at Adam, Neal finally believed it. Neal'd forever look thirty-two. He had forever.

"Holy shit," he muttered, sinking back onto the couch.

Moz fluttered beside the armrest, asking, "Neal, are you okay?"

Adam knelt at his feet, pulling Neal forward so that their foreheads touched. "Breathe, Neal," he murmured. "It is overwhelming, I know. But I am here, and your friend Mozzie. We'll take care of you."

o0o

Neal finally fell asleep in Adam's arms, listening to a lullaby crooned in a language dead before words were ever written down.

"Wha's your name?" he slurred into the junction of Adam's shoulder and neck.

"I don't remember," Adam answered. "What's yours?"

"Noah," Neal said. "He died twenty years ago. Just a dumbass kid."

Adam pressed a kiss to the crown of his head and Moz hissed something from across the room, but Adam resumed his lullaby and Neal quit fighting to stay awake.

o0o

Neal woke just before noon. Moz and Adam were seated on the couch, speaking an old form of Italian that Neal only recognized because of some research he did after Adam's lectures on da Vinci.

"Did you _know_ da Vinci?" he asked, slumping against the doorway.

Adam laughed. "I didn't know every famous person in history."

"Just most of them," Moz cut in.

Neal stretched, letting himself get lost in their bickering. His whole world had changed (he had _forever_, if he kept his head), but here, in the kitchen of June's beautiful loft, in his favorite city in the world, it all seemed like such a great adventure.

o0o

"You're lucky," Adam said as they strolled down the street later that afternoon.

Adam had called him in with a stomach bug and he had to be in early next the morning (if possible), but he had a freed day.

"How so?" Neal asked, neatly ducking a pickpocket and snagging her loot in the process.

Adam grinned, planting a twenty in the girl's pocket. "No one knows you died, so you can live here for a couple more decades, if you like."

They were silent for a few blocks. Adam had done something to the tracker, so it would appear like Neal spent the day in the loft—in bed or wrapped around the toilet, and he'd be appropriately miserable tomorrow—and there was apparently a quaint little deli Adam remembered from forty years ago. He wanted to see if it was still there.

"I'd like to finish out my sentence," Neal said. "Just a couple years left. Then we'll go from there, see what I want then."

Adam smiled at him, pulled him in for a quick kiss, and said, "Right up here."

o0o

Adam stayed for almost two weeks, dodging Peter the whole while. He taught Neal more than a few dirty tricks with a sword and said, "Practice till it's instinct. Time is the greatest teacher."

Neal still didn't know how old he truly was. Moz said he was at least two thousand, but probably a great deal older.

"You're fun," Adam murmured in his ear as he prepared to leave. "I'd like you to stay around for awhile." A deep kiss and Adam pulled away, a scrap of paper with a phone number only for emergencies tucked into Neal's pocket.

"Good to see you again, Marcus," he told Mozzie. "And look out for this kid, y'hear?"

Moz nodded. "I'll see you at Thursday as scheduled."

Adam caressed Neal's cheek and was gone.

o0o

Things continued on at work like nothing had changed. Neal solved puzzles, went undercover, ate lunch with Peter and dinner with Peter and Elizabeth. He practiced with a sword and hacked into the Watchers' database with the codes and ID Adam gave him, to catch up on the history of his people.

He'd finish out his deal with Peter. After that… he wanted to stay, to keep Peter and Elizabeth. Besides Moz, they were the closest thing to family he'd ever had. Even Kate had mostly been a fantasy. Peter and El were the real deal.

He didn't want to lose them. And he'd never believed he'd outlive them. Neal always knew he'd die young.

He _did_ die young, and his bitter, heartbroken chuckle had Jones looking over to ask, "Caffrey, you okay?"

Neal nodded. "Just fine," he lied.

He'd keep Peter and El till the four years were up. Then he'd find Adam and travel the world until there was nothing left to see.

o0o

(He went back for the funerals, Adam and Moz at his side.)


	13. I am the end of time

**Title**: I am the end of time

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: none stated

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 265

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Any, Any, It's only the end of the world again.

* * *

The world is always ending. He's seen the panic before; soon enough, he'll see it again. He _was_ the end once, he and his brothers.

Now he's alone, with no one who can possibly understand why he greets the threat of total annihilation with merely a raised brow and the demand for something full of alcohol. And in all honesty… even Kronos had no idea.

He's been here before, times beyond measure. He's survived. Even thrived. The world is always ending for someone, somewhere. Glaciers recede, seas rise, men find new ways to kill each other. He has been Death, and eventually, he will probably be Death again, when the children in charge get too rowdy.

But the true end of the world, when all life dies? He'll survive that, too. He's done it before, when it was the sky falling or the ocean sweeping in, when the planet shook beneath him and the very Earth cried.

The world is always ending. So he'll drink his beer and watch the news until the panic passes, and he'll smirk at Duncan when the boy righteously demands answers.

He has no answers. There are simply things he knows, has always known.

He is the oldest of their kind, the oldest living thing on the planet Earth. Older than mountains, far older than men. There isn't a place in the world he hasn't been, because he walked her before the continents separated. There is no secret he hasn't learned, and many he invented.

The children will weep, will ask _why_.

The world is always ending, and he will never reply.


	14. There are many names in history

**Title**: There are many names in history

**Fandom**: Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: no capital letters

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 190

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**:

"History repeats itself. Somebody says this.  
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,  
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.  
History is a little man in a brown suit  
trying to define a room he is outside of.  
I know history. There are many names in history  
but none of them are ours."

-Little Beast, Richard Siken

* * *

_he has walked through this book before, he knows this, he has been here and felt it and survived._

_he always survives. a bit broken, shattered and torn, worn and tattered, but he survives and he walks on._

_he has walked through this book before, salt and iron, blood and bone, tears and sweat and sunlight, sunlight, calm before the storm and clear skies after._

_they ask him for the story, for the lesson, for what he has earned in the surviving._

_he could tell them a thousand different things, a million, a different parable for every day of five thousand—longer, oh so much longer—years, for every name he's worn, every man woman child he's killed, every horse—pale as moonlight, as snow, as bone—he's ridden, every lie and truth he's told._

_he's walked this road before. there is nowhere he hasn't been, nothing he hasn't done, and they ask his name, his story, want their piece of the myth._

_it will not matter what he says. so he says everything, sheaths his sword, pats his pale horse, and walks into the sun._

_he'll be back, of course._


	15. next thing, the world

**Title**: Next thing, the world

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: AU during season 4

**Pairings**: Methos/Alexa

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**:355

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, the Hunters had gone after Alexa. Now they were all fair game.

* * *

Alexa dies peacefully in Adam's arms, and she still has no idea who those men were.

Adam kisses her forehead and her lips, and tells her legends, until her vibrant spirit fades.

Adam buries Alexa. And then Adam dies.

o0o

Death has not walked the world in a very long time. Even then, his name was Methos, and he was a myth.

The hunters, those corrupt Watchers, believe Adam Pierson is a young immortal, a traitor, and an easy target. Of the three, they got one right.

Kronos could teach a course on Methos' treachery.

If Alexa hadn't been so frail… well, Methos would still have destroyed them all. It wouldn't have been so lingering, though.

o0o

Alexa would not want men dead in her name. But Alexa isn't here to object, and Death killed hundreds of thousands of men long before Alexa was born.

o0o

A month after Alexa's burial, twenty Watchers are dead and the rest are bundles of terror and rage. Death considers excising the entire cancer—every human who knows about immortals. Men and women who were friends of Adam Pierson, researchers who never knowingly met an immortal. Even Joe Dawson, one of his favorite humans in centuries.

He considers it. It would be easy. Adam Pierson is young, and innocent, and grieving the death of his wife. He's not even a suspect.

Instead, he traces those guilty and only kills everyone who seems to agree. The end result is one hundred and five dead and an entire society shaken to its core.

Once he's done, everyone knows why.

o0o

Methos created the Watchers. He reveals himself only to let them know he could destroy them, and then he vanishes again.

o0o

Alex Adamson is born on a warm day in Sydney. He is fresh out of grad school, graduated from Oxford. He is an orphan and an only child. He tells everyone who asks that he's after a fresh start.

Kronos finds him a year later and says that he's impressed.

Death raises a brow at Pestilence and says that he's not interested.

His beloved brother smiles and says, "I always knew when you lied."


	16. Mingling hands and mingling glances

**Title**: Mingling hands and mingling glances

**Fandom**: White Collar/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic for Highlander; sometime in season 2 for White Collar

**Pairings**: Methos/Neal, Peter/Elizabeth, pre-OT3

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 550

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: a little snippet of Peter seeing Methos and Neal kissing

**Notes**: for Touch of the Wind, since she requested it

* * *

The weekend is Neal-free time, when Peter does things with Elizabeth. Sometimes she has a commitment for her business that she couldn't schedule for during the week or Peter has a case that boils over, but usually, she and Peter go on adventures—museums and art galleries and travel anywhere they can get to in less than a day.

Neal knows not to bother Peter on the weekends unless they have a case. Peter isn't sure what Neal does, but so far it's never gotten him in trouble.

o0o

Peter is called in the middle of Saturday with an emergency that only he and Neal can solve. Neal doesn't answer his phone, but Peter calls up his Neal-map and sees that the tracker is still at Neal's loft. He figures that Neal is in the shower or napping or sketching on the balcony away from his phone, so he kisses El and heads over.

He doesn't bother knocking, just goes on in. Neal isn't napping or in the shower, so Peter checks the balcony, and there Neal is.

Peter freezes in place, unable to look away. Neal's on the balcony, alright, but he isn't alone. There's another man with him: slightly taller, hair just as dark, paler than him.

And, well. There's a good reason Neal didn't answer the phone.

"We have a visitor," Neal's friend murmurs, smirking at Peter over Neal's shoulder. "Your lawman, from the looks of him."

Neal chuckles and spins in place, keeping his friend's arms around him. "Peter, hey," he says, and he's as collected as always. "Agent Peter Burke," he introduces, "this is an old friend of mine, Matt." He tilts his head back to say, much softer, "A _very_ old friend."

Matt smiles at him and presses a kiss to his neck; Peter finally looks away, swallowing.

"So, what's up?" Neal asks, pulling away and sauntering past Peter to grab the shirt lying on his bed.

Matt just leans back against the balcony, still smirking, so Peter turns to follow Neal and says, "We've got a case."

o0o

The emergency turns out to be not so urgent. Peter considers and discards almost a dozen opening gambits in asking Neal about his old friend Matt with the completely unplaceable accent, but he never quite works up the nerve and then Hughes tells them to go home.

"See you Monday," Neal says with a wave.

"Yeah," Peter responds, watching him go.

He really needs to talk to El.

o0o

It's not that Neal was kissing a man, Peter explains to Elizabeth, pacing in front of the couch. He couldn't care less about that.

"Really, hon?" El asks.

Peter pauses mid-step. "It's not that he was kissing a _man_," he repeats, more slowly.

"It's that he _wasn't_ kissing _you_," Elizabeth finishes. "Remember, we have talked about this."

Shaking his head, Peter says, "But that was all hypothetical! Or maybe for your birthday."

Elizabeth stands and reaches out. He takes her hand and lets her pull him in, and she smiles up at him. "Neal adores you, Peter. And he thinks I'm wonderful. So let him play with Matt this weekend, and then invite him over for supper Monday night."

Peter nods, leans down to kiss her, and decides not to think about Neal until at least tomorrow morning.


	17. Then he was legend

**Title**: Then he was legend

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic, character death, immortal origin story that may not make much sense

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**:325

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, any, Immortals are born to be warriors.

Joe is on his death-bed. Methos knows he'll be gone by sunrise, to that one place he's never been. Duncan is in the chair next to him, hands wrapped around Joe's, and he's trying to hold in his tears.

"Hey, Old Man," Joe wheezes. "Tell me where you think immortals came from. My last request."

Methos leans against the wall, looks at Joe for a moment, then looks past him, into a past so far gone he's the only one who remembers it. He's the only one who was there.

0000

_once there was a lightning bolt, and there was an ocean. in the ocean lived things, primal and young. they only knew hunger and satiation, and the fear of filling something else's belly. to escape, one of them crawled out of the ocean onto a barren desert, and there it met the lightning bolt._

the lightning bolt studied the creature, trying to understand—the bolt didn't breathe, or hunger, or fear. it had been forever, and would be forever more. it was… curious.

**what are you, little thing?** it asked.

and the creature said, **I'm alive.**

the lightning bolt smiled and reached down to touch the first living thing it'd ever met.

**be strong, little thing,** it said. **live. grow stronger. we'll meet again some other day.**

and so, the legend goes… the first immortal came to be.

at least, that's how the oldest tells it. And it's not like anyone else was there who can say it went any different.

00000

Joe looks at him and smiles… and doesn't breathe again.

It'll be a hundred years before Duncan sees Methos again, and though he wants to ask about the story, he never will.

000000

**_what are you, little thing?_**_ it asked._

and, like every time before and every time after, the oldest living being on the planet said, **I'm alive. I'll grow stronger. we'll meet again some other day.**

and the lightning bolt smiled.

o


	18. there will be stars forever

**Title**: There will be stars forever

**Fandom**: Highlander/White Collar

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic for Highlander; early in the series for White Collar

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 250

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, pickpocketing.

* * *

His name is Ben Adamson today, and he's an Australian on loan with some Aborigine artifacts for the Museum of Natural History. He's charmed everyone he's to work with and being back in the States has been fun so far. He let the elder Highlander know he's in town, shot the shit about Duncan (off on another crusade to save everyone in need of it), and now he's on the way to his hotel. Ben's got a bit more money than Adam (graduate student, young Watcher, and then infant immortal) had, but it's still not what Methos would like.

He's doing the whole tourist thing on the way, noting what has changed and what hasn't, editing his mental map of the city. A pretty young thing catches his eye: slim, fit, brilliant blue eyes, artfully tousled dark hair.

While he watches, the kid (a pre-immortal, maybe he should stay around longer?) expertly picks the pockets of passing businessmen, and then slips the wallets into the pockets of others. After a moment, he realizes that all the victims are going into the same office building, so the chaos should be minimized.

When the man whose outfit screams Fed walks up and claims the kid, he understands.

Hmm. Ben Adamson may be permanently reassigned to New York. The kid bears further watching, and if he's a criminal who turned on his own kind… well. He'll probably be dead soon, and Duncan would be so disappointed if Methos let him go it alone.


	19. Ask the aged why they weep

**Title**: Ask the aged why they weep

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 265

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, any, the Watchers tell stories about old Joe Dawson.

* * *

For some, Joe Dawson is what they aspire to be—a human, friends with an immortal. More than one immortal. The best of them all, some say, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. And the oldest, the one who fooled everyone, pretending to be a human, pretending to be young... Methos, who had muddled his own chronicle so thoroughly nobody could untangle what was lie and what was fact.

(Joe Dawson, they say, laughed, and said, _aren't those the same thing? history's written by the victor, and no one is more victorious than the Old Man_.)

But to some, Joe Dawson is an old shame—the Watcher who interfered. Who cared. Who changed things, and not for the better.

Who told an immortal about the Watchers. Treason, choosing a race of murderers over his own kind, and daring to say that Duncan was the best man he'd ever known.

Joe Dawson is an embarrassment and a blight, and should have been executed, not praised. Not lifted high in the annals of the Watchers as what all should strive to be, not just recorders of dry facts, who went where and who beat whom, but why and what the immortals felt, and what they believed.

And one day, two hundred years after the Purge of the Hunters, after Joe Dawson died of old age, surrounded by his daughter and a few of his own students and half a dozen immortals, a young researcher named Matt Adamson opens a very old book, donated to the Watchers by Joe Dawson, and begins to read words he'd written three millennia before.


	20. Memory strives with Death

**Title**: Memory strives with Death

**Fandom**: White Collar/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: no HL characters appear; takes place early in WC

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 210

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: White Collar; Neal; "May you find what you're looking for."

* * *

The buzz hits while he's waiting in line for his coffee. Peter's in his car, on the phone with Hughes about some crisis they'll deal with when they get to the office, and Neal hasn't carried a sword since he became Neal almost a decade and a half ago.

He almost panics, almost looks around and gives himself away. But Neal has been in the Game for a very long time and most immortals can't actually pinpoint a buzz. So he smiles at the barista, gives his and Peter's order, waits patiently while chatting with another customer about her adorable toddler, drops a five in the tip jar, and collects his two coffees, all without looking around like a fool.

He even smiles at the other immortal as he leaves in the middle of a crowd. The man looks middle-aged, though fit, of course. He's staring hard at everyone and can't even tell when Neal walks right past him. Young, then. Maybe a century, but probably not. He won't notice for a little while that Neal's buzz has faded, and he won't remember Neal.

Peter burns his mouth on the coffee and grumbles about it. Neal tries not to remember certain things and wonders how long that kid will last.


	21. a child of the heartless wind

**Title**: a child of the heartless wind

**Disclaimer**: Kronos isn't mine

**Warnings**: takes place right before the Horsemen arc; Kronos is creepy; I know nothing about laboratory procedures

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG13

**Wordcount**: 360

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, one of Kronos' co-workers; The newest employee at the lab is a bit of a strange one.

(Because he had to work with people at least initially, right?)

* * *

There was something very off with Dr. Konje. Isabel had noticed it immediately, but Dr. Esse had sung the man's praises since Day One and ran right over every single protest she raised, talking down to her like he hadn't since she kicked his ass at the first department-wide kickball game.

So Isabel resolved to watch and document _everything_.

The first year seemed almost normal, and only Isabel noticed the glint in Dr. Konje's eyes. He treated everyone like his own personal servants, commanding them without a second thought. And his personality was so powerful, so damned _charming_, that everyone listened. Didn't react except to obey. Even Isabel, and she hated it.

The second year passed much the same, except Dr. Konje's project—a virus manufactured from every strain of plague on record—took a very dangerous turn. Isabel went straight to Dr. Esse when she found out and demanded it be halted. She understood the need for experimentation, but some things just begged for trouble, and what he was doing… it could go _so wrong_.

Dr. Esse agreed with her and called Dr. Konje in for a meeting.

Isabel wasn't even that surprised when Dr. Esse had a heart-attack during that meeting, or that Dr. Konje—despite his lack of seniority—was promoted to Dr. Esse's position.

She thought about quitting. Getting the fuck out of town, to escape Konje's eyes, his leer, his goddamned virus that Murphy's Law would have _such_ a good time with.

But she needed the job. If she left now, she wouldn't get a recommendation letter, and surely, someone else had noticed Konje's madness…

And then there was a lockdown in the one of the labs. Isabel and three other doctors were caught in it, and Konje spoke over the loudspeaker, and Isabel heard the smirk in his voice as he said, _science may remember you as the first in Pestilence's new wave…_

Then he laughed, and added, _or maybe only Pestilence will remember your names at all_.

Isabel didn't die screaming, but that's only because the virus paralyzed her vocal cords, and she died with Konje's laughter ringing in her ears.


	22. I can see from here where I'll standing

**Title**: I can see from here where I'll standing at the end

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: kinda parent/child

**Pairings**: Methos/Kronos

**Rating**: PG13

**Wordcount**:670

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos/Any, 'Father Figure' (song by George Michael)

* * *

Methos has had over five hundred children. Most of them came with women, as he lived with or married widows (or equivalents thereof before the invention of weddings), but some he found and kept for various reasons.

Kronos had been one. Treated as a son, then brother, then lover—and as Kronos' personality exploded, Methos stepped back and let him take the reins, as it were. Then Kronos found Caspian and saw what a terrifying pet he could be. To even things out, Methos adopted Silas. If Silas hadn't been so quiet (except during a raid), Kronos would have engineered an accident.

He'd always been possessive, and thought of Methos as his. His father, his brother, his lover.

Methos does not like being owned. Kronos knew that, of course.

Kronos was both his brightest triumph and greatest failure, and Methos _could_ imagine delivering the final blow. Take the boy's life, the boy he had saved and raised and loved for almost four thousand years. The boy to whom he had given the world. They were gods, once. Death and Pestilence, takers of life. Heralds of the end for three continents—all the world known, at that time. Men such as them had come and gone, but all others died and became dust.

Not so, them—Methos and Kronos, legends and terrors, and he should have killed the boy. But he did not want to. Had never wanted to. If he wanted Kronos dead, he would have taken his head instead of throwing him down a well.

But MacLeod… if anyone but Methos had to kill Kronos, MacLeod was best.

MacLeod was not a son. Surely not a brother. But he could be a lover, someday. After Methos had worked through MacLeod killing Kronos.

Kronos. He'd been such a bright boy, all those years ago. Methos had other children after him, but none had ever been his equal. None had ever been so strong.

The one lesson he never mastered was adaptability. He could fake it, for a time. Very well, in fact. But he hadn't truly changed—he still wanted to rule the world, like the gods they had once been. And when he told Methos his plan, when he asked Methos to make it workable… _ah, my beautiful boy,_ Methos had thought. _beloved, the world has changed since we rode with the sun at our backs._

It is a father's duty to teach his children to survive. At whatever cost. And when they will only destroy themselves or others… a father must take responsibility and do what he can.

Before that final battle with MacLeod, Methos had let Kronos take him one last time, and he had kissed Kronos' forehead, and watching the boy walk away, he had thought, _my beautiful boy, I will miss your fire._

And as he killed Silas, as MacLeod killed Kronos, as Kronos' quickening rushed for Methos and he dropped his sword to embrace his heart's child, he thought, _beloved, you have always been my favorite_.

And he felt Kronos in his mind, in his soul, and the boy replied, _now we are truly together, until the end of time._

Methos has had many children over the millennia. He outlived them all, even the immortal ones. None has ever been his equal, and a boy he found and raised almost four thousand years ago is the closest anyone has ever come.

Kronos called himself the End of Time. In his soul, Methos cradled the boy's quickening and hummed a soft lullaby. _we lived and we grew stronger, beloved,_ Methos murmured. _we will fight again another day, you and I, together._

MacLeod will never understand, of course. He even had Richie, and he will still never comprehend. Richie had been a good boy, and he might have one day been a good man. But all of the children today are so impatient, so impetuous. He cannot see many living to be his age.

_Ah, Kronos… we could have mastered the stars, my beautiful boy, if only you had learned._

Instead he stares up at the night sky, far from any town, and he remembers.


	23. five thousand more

**Title**: five thousand more

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: spoilers for everything?

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 290

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Notes**: inspired by faithunbreakable's "a storyteller's prerogative"; hers is better

* * *

He's been five thousand for years and years. He was five thousand when he met Kronos, when he took Cassandra, when he drank with Darius and talked philosophy with Rebecca, when he taught Byron and joined the Watchers and charmed-infuriated-played with Duncan.

He's been five thousand and lived through volcanoes and sank to the bottom of the ocean and watched silently as everything ended and began anew.

He's been five thousand and tamed horses and hunted mammoths and huddled in the snow. He's been five thousand and he may have been the first to ever purposefully strike a fire. It's impossible to say, really. He'll claim it for his own, though, if anyone ever asks. (It's good to be a myth. The children may challenge his words—and even him—but no one can ever be sure.)

He's been five thousand and rode a pale horse and terrorized a world. He's still famous for that, a part of popular culture. He was a monster, and he was a man, and the children may judge—will judge—but they weren't there. They don't know. Strip away 'civilization' (be from the ages _before_ civilization) and see what is left, what is necessary to simply see another dawn.

He's been five thousand and he _survives_. There were others with him, though they weren't five thousand, and they are all dead. He killed some, but most simply couldn't adapt. They did what they'd always done and the children, so bloodthirsty, so violent, ripped them apart.

He's been five thousand for a very long time. (Some he remembers. Most he doesn't.)

He's been five thousand for a very long time, and he'll be five thousand for longer still.

(He's been five thousand and _he survives_.)


	24. that still moment

**Title**: that still moment between the thunder clap and the lightning bolt

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Diane Lockward

**Warnings**: spoilers for the Horsemen arc

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 550

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: bone

* * *

In his dreams there's a horse. She's beautifully formed, dark eyes, pale as bone. Sometimes there's a rider in a black cloak with a white crown on his head, but usually the mare runs free. Sometimes she's a unicorn, sometimes she's got wings. A few times, she has both.

He wakes with regret, leaving her behind. He misses her.

Sometimes the rider has a scythe, but most often a sword. His face is painted blue. His hair is long and dark, eyes flashing. He has a name, and so does the horse, but no one living knows either.

The most common dream involves a valley by moonlight, and a pale mare cantering along a river. The rider, in his cloak and crown, sword sheathed at his hip, calls a name that echoes into the distant mountains. The horse turns and canters to him, in a stride that has consumed nations. She nudges him with her nose and he rubs at her ears. He mounts with ease, the mare spreads wings as pale as her coat, and they fly from the valley.

He's wondered, more than once, what Dawson and MacLeod would make of his dreams. He knows that none of his brothers had such fantasies about the horses they rode.

But then, they were very young. And the mounts of red and black and white, War and Famine and Pestilence—they were mortal, the horses and the riders. His brothers had numerous mounts in the years they rode together.

And he, the pale rider, he had but one. As old as the ocean, as the sky. As old as him, his beloved steed from before horses were domesticated, broken to harness and rein.

She's waiting, he knows. Waiting till he calls her from the dream. Waiting till she can run free once more, till she can take to the sky, till he wields his sword and she slays enemies with her horn and hooves, and they are feared the world over, people screaming their names in anguish and in agony.

_beloved_, his pale mare whispers in the dream. _beloved, I'm waiting_.

They were and they are and they will be forever, old as the ocean and the sky, the pale horse (with wings and spiraling horn) and the pale rider (cloaked with crown and sword), and he is called Death, and his mare is called Hell, but they were and they are and they will be—

And the man legend calls Methos wakes with a sigh as a pale horse canters in his mind.

He grips his sword, gleaming and sharp, made from a material no man could know. _One day_, he thinks, caressing the blade and smiling as the sword bites deep, _one day, beloved, we will be free again_.

One day, the pale horse and pale rider will return, and her stride will consume nations and his sword will slaughter the world.

His younger brother proclaimed _I am the End of Time_. Death struck; Pestilence and War fell, like Famine before them. The steed and the rider, older than time, older than men, older than horses.

Death has always been. And his vacation will soon be over, this life as a legend.

_You will fly again, beloved_, he thinks, sheathing his sword.

And he will ride.


	25. And indeed there will be time

**Title**: And indeed there will be time

**Fandom**: Sherlock BBC/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my charcters

**Warnings**: future!fic, momentary character death

**Pairings**: John/Sherlock

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 500

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Dedication**: caffienekitty for her birthday, to her prompt _someone dealing with a __panic attack__? Sherlock, Chuck or Supernatural, any of them_

* * *

It happens on a routine chase, the kind that's barely worth mentioning anymore, and a piece of information that Sherlock overlooked. (He didn't miss it; he merely didn't register how important it truly was until a horrifically inopportune moment.)

John realizes a full minute before Sherlock that they've lost control of the situation, and he reacts with admirable swiftness; he lunges for Sherlock, covering his body as best he can, and tells him, "_Don't panic_."

Sherlock does not panic. He feels John's body jerk, hears John's gasp of pain, and watches John die, feels him go slack, and demands in a whisper that becomes a shout, "John? John!"

The warehouse is silent. Their quarry is gone. And John is dead, still covering Sherlock.

Sherlock does panic, now.

o0o

Minutes become hours. Sherlock's mobile is in his hand, but he's yet to text anyone. John's head is in his lap and his free hand tangles in John's hair.

He should call Mycroft. Or Lestrade. Both, probably.

He's solved the case, of course. That final piece of information has slotted into place.

He should call Mycroft. Let his big brother fix everything, make it so this never happened.

But it _did_ happen, and Mycroft can't bring John back to life.

Sherlock realizes, distantly listening to himself sob, that he's been crying for hours now. Muttering, too, begging John to come back.

He'd be horrified if he was at a crime-scene and witnessed someone acting like this. He'd turn to John, see the sorrow and empathy on John's face, and he'd hesitate to ask, not wanting John to look at him with disappointed eyes.

He really should call Mycroft. And Lestrade.

Sherlock _would_ ask, though, as they left the scene. He'd assure John that he himself would never act like that, but he'd inquire as to why someone would. And he wouldn't admit to himself or to John, that if anything ever happened to two—maybe four—people, he would grieve before doing something terribly violent and utterly fatal.

John would give him a slightly pitying look before explaining exactly what the still-wailing man, woman, or child was feeling, and Sherlock would listen. Later, he would decide whether to delete the information or not.

After all, John would explain the next time he asked, and the next, and the next…

"John," he murmurs, fingers tightening in John's hair. "_John_."

He finally begins composing a text, telling Mycroft and Lestrade to come at once.

Before he hits **send**, John gasps and coughs, eyes opening.

Sherlock drops his phone.

o0o

Much later, John will tell a very old friend that he only worried for a moment, blinking up at Sherlock's shocked face, how Sherlock would react.

Sherlock will cut in, then, and tell the old friend that of course he listened to John and didn't panic. Sherlock Holmes does not panic.

The old friend will chuckle and wish them many happy centuries together.

John will smile and meet Sherlock's small, sincere grin with a thorough kiss.


	26. we thought we'd live forever

**Title**: we thought we'd live forever

**Fandom**: Highlander/White Collar

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: takes place early in season 2 of WC; future!fic for HL; implied torture, abuse, and non-con in the past

**Pairings**: Peter/Elizabeth, pre-OT3 thoughts, Methos/Neal, past-OMC/Neal

**Rating**: PG13

**Wordcount**: 1595

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: fence

* * *

Neal has been irritable for weeks. His voice has become sharper and sharper, his tone so biting it borders on cruel. He's infuriated Diana, annoyed Jones, and Peter constantly wants to smack him. With a sledgehammer.

It is not a good situation, and when Peter talked to June, he learned that even she has been bothered by Neal's attitude.

Peter's asked Neal more than once what's going on. It's clear that Neal _wants_ to tell him, and Peter is getting tired of being in the dark.

Neal is his responsibility, his friend—simply, Neal is _his_, and Neal's not letting him do his job and take care of the problem.

Well, no more. Peter has told Hughes to only call for the direst of emergencies, he's let Elizabeth know he'll be busy this weekend, and he's going to lock the door to Neal's loft.

This weekend, Neal _will_ tell Peter what's wrong, even if Peter has to tie him down and sit on him.

_Oh, Peter_, he winces. _Bad thought. Can't do that without El_. They have an agreement.

Anyway, he has a foolproof plan.

o0o

Everything goes wrong. There's a man in Neal's loft, a brute of a man who yells at Neal in a language Peter doesn't know. Neal yells back, stepping in front of Peter like he's some kind of fighter, and the man growls something before stalking out.

Neal glares at Peter, demands he leaves, and then ignores him when Peter demands answers instead.

"Neal!" Peter finally hollers. "Is that guy the reason you've been so—" He can't think of an appropriate word that won't make the situation worse.

Neal shakes his head. "I can handle him, Peter." He flashes an approximation of his grin. "Don't worry."

o0o

The watch a movie. Peter falls asleep. He wakes to an empty apartment. By the time he's grabbed his jacket and pulled out his phone to call up his Neal-map, Neal has opened the door.

Peter drops the phone because Neal's shirt is sliced to pieces and he's covered in blood.

"Shit," Neal says. "I…" He wavers in place. "Something's wrong, Peter." He sounds so young. "I want Adamas."

Peter lunges forward to catch him and carefully lifts him, settles him on the bed. He gently pulls off Neal's shirt—for all the blood, Neal doesn't have a single wound. Not even a bruise.

He should call his boss, or Elizabeth, or June. He calls Havisham.

"Do you know anyone named Adamas?" he demands. "Neal mentioned wanting him before passing out."

"Oh, fuck," Havisham says. "That's… that's very bad, Suit."

Peter's panic ratchets up a notch. "Should I call a bus or take him to the hospital?"

"No!" Havisham yelps. "That'll only make things worse. I'll be over soon."

"Havisham," Peter asks. "What about Adamas?"

Silence for a moment before Havisham sighs. "I can't… I'll leave a message." His voice tightens when he says, "Take care of Neal 'til I get there."

o0o

Neal nearly wakes a few times, mumbling. The only word Peter recognizes is _Adamas_. By the time Havisham arrives, Peter's convinced himself to take Neal to the hospital.

"Calm down, Burke," Havisham says. "Don't make me slap you."

The shock of hearing Havisham say his name snaps Peter out of his panic.

"Good," Havisham says. "Now, tell me _everything_ Neal said or did today."

o0o

Neal wakes with the dawn. He shifts on the bed, stretching, and grins at Peter as he sits up.

Then he sees Havisham and the grin falls off his face. "What happened?" he asks.

Havisham keeps silent, so Peter replies, "I have no idea." He pauses, but Neal just stares at him with those brilliant blue eyes. "Who is Adamas, Neal?" Peter asks, his voice gentle. Whatever is going on, he's pretty sure it's not Neal's fault. Somewhat sure.

Neal blanches and his eyes shoot to Havisham.

"You begged for him," Havisham says. "All night long. And his name was the last thing you said before collapsing in the Suit's arms."

Neal falls backwards onto the bed and covers his face.

o0o

Peter fixes breakfast while Havisham and Neal don't talk. He tries to remember anything he ever learned or supposed about Neal Caffrey. Most of the guesses were wrong, but some had been right.

None help now. Peter decides to let it go for the moment, while they eat, but no one is leaving the loft until he knows.

o0o

Neal is in the shower when a knock comes at the door. Peter shares a look with Havisham before moving to answer it.

He doesn't know the man standing there—Peter's height, shaggy dark hair, pale skin, and a very proud nose. But Havisham says, "Ben!" in a tone Peter recognizes: excited, happy, _relieved_.

"You called me, Marcus," Ben replies. His accent is a perfect replica of Havisham's.

Peter backs up, out of the way. Ben smiles at him.

"Adamas!" Neal yells, running out of the bathroom in only his pants, hair still dripping. He looks young again. Ben-Adamas catches him and pulls him close, fingers biting into the smooth skin of his back, tangling in his hair as he cups Neal's skull.

And, surprise surprise, they're muttering in a language Peter has never heard before. Or heard of, since he usually _recognizes_ a language, even if he has no idea what the words mean.

He'll give them a minute before demanding answers, but he will be demanding answers.

o0o

"Peter," Neal finally says, setting on the couch and pulling Ben-Adamas with him. "What I'm about to tell you, you can't ever use it against me, okay?" He's solemn, eyes sincere. "It'll be a deal-breaker, Peter. I'll leave and never come back."

While Peter thinks about that, Neal continues, "Swear on your love for Elizabeth."

"Neal," he says. "You know I can't make that promise."

"Agent Burke," Ben-Adamas cuts in, and now his voice is as smooth as Neal's during his best cons, warm as honey. "Anything Neal tells you, he is not to blame for. All of it was my fault, and I'll accept the consequences." He pauses while Havisham splutters and Neal turns to him with wide eyes. "However," he adds, voice now hard and unyielding as a blade, "the statute of limitations has long since passed. And all of it was self-defense or defense of another."

Peter watches as Neal's hand grabs Ben-Adamas' shirt and clenches, and Ben-Adamas just keeps going, ignoring everything in the room except Peter's gaze.

"I offered to take Neal away from here, Agent Burke."

Peter's breath catches and he bites in a denial.

Ben-Adamas continues, "Give him time to rest, time to heal. He defeated a monster from his past, something I should have dealt with a long time ago." Neal leans into him and Ben-Adamas presses a quick kiss to his temple.

"Promise, Peter," Neal whispers. "Please."

"I swear, Neal," Peter says firmly. "Everything I hear today, from you, Havisham, and whoever he is, will be off the record. Full immunity." Whatever it is… if it'll get that look off Neal's face, he's willing to let it go.

Neal's relief is painful to see and Ben-Adamas gently unclenches Neal's fingers from his shirt only to thread them with his own.

"I had a gang, once," Ben-Adamas says. "I was second-in-command, but I made all the plans." He still hasn't looked away from Peter. "We found a boy once. A pretty little thing. Had more potential than I'd seen in a long time."

"But you—" Peter stops, looking at Ben-Adamas' smile.

"I'm older than my appearance would lead you to believe," he says, voice silky and dark. "My brother, our leader—he wanted the boy, but I claimed him. I kept him and taught him, and then, when I was thoroughly impressed by one of the cretins licking at my heels, I gave the boy to him as a reward. And when the cretin mistreated him, I took him back."

Peter flinches. Neal closes his eyes, and Havisham says, "You… you just gave him to someone else?" Peter swiftly glances at him; Havisham looks—horrified. And betrayed.

Ben-Adamas ignores him, still looking at Peter. "Some people hold grudges, Agent Burke. You understand, I'm sure. I killed a man once for hurting something I cared for. And that man's brother came for vengeance, _long_ after the fact, and Neal defended himself." Without looking away from Peter, he shifts his body, pulling Neal almost all the way into his lap, wrapping his arms around Neal.

"I—I understand," Peter says. He glances at Havisham again, who clearly knows more than him—and just as clearly won't tell him. "I'll see you on Monday, Neal," Peter says quietly.

He turns to go, but then pauses, looks back, and says, "Please don't vanish."

If Ben-Adamas spirited him away, Peter knows, certain beyond doubt, he'd never find Neal again.

Neal smiles at him. Not as bright as his usual, but still _real_. "I'll see you on Monday, Peter," he says, warm as the sky on a summer day.

o0o

At home, Peter holds Elizabeth tight, face pressed into her neck. "It's alright, hon, I promise," she says, rubbing his back. "Whatever's wrong, it'll be alright."

Peter wants to demand answers, to slam Ben-Adamas into a wall and shoot him in the face, to make him say everything he and his gang had done to Neal.

But as long as Neal is still in New York on Monday… Peter will let it go.

As long as Neal is still in New York on Monday.


	27. upon earth there is not his like

**Title**: upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 310

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: verdant

* * *

Joe is old now. Pushing ninety… never believed he'd live this long. Duncan is asleep, slumped in the chair by the bed. Amy and her daughter are in the kitchen, getting coffee. He was surprised when they turned up, and continually surprised they're still here.

_I called him,_ Duncan said yesterday. _Left a message._

_Don't worry, Mac, _Joe rasped. _He'll come or he won't._

Joe doesn't expect him to. The Old Man went wandering three decades ago. Hasn't been back once.

But Mac jerks to wakefulness, eyes wide. "He's here," Mac breathes. "Joe, Methos is back." He bounces out of his seat, hurries to the door, and opens it to the Old Man's smirk.

"MacLeod," he says. "Joseph." His accent is Spanish now, his skin slightly tanned. His clothes are brighter than anything Adam Pierson ever wore, and his hair is longer, loose and brushing his shoulders.

Mac claps him on the shoulder. "Wonderful to see you!" he says.

Methos smiles. "Call me Alejandro."

"Alejandro," Mac repeats warmly. "I'll let you two catch up."

He leaves, gently closing the door behind him. Methos settles into the empty chair, sprawling like a cat.

Joe sighs, trying to get comfortable, and Methos leans forward. "Don't fight so hard, Joe," he says softly. "You've earned a rest."

Joe chuckles, says, "Everyone else tellin' me to hold on… 'course you'd be different."

Methos shrugs. "Tell me what I can do."

Joe looks at him, at the kid who was once Adam Pierson, a shy smartass, and is still Methos, the most dangerous man in the world.

Who came to visit him on his deathbed. Who saved his daughter and never held Joe's betrayal against him.

"Will you tell me a story?" he asks.

Methos smiles. "Listen, dear child," he says, voice thick and deep like chocolate, "to the tale of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon…"


	28. They had not skill enough

**Title**: They had not skill enough your worth to sing

**Fandom**: Highlander/Sherlock

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: character death

**Pairings**: John/Sherlock (ish)

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 110

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: any, any, our hearts are joined until Time slips its tired hand into our tired hands

* * *

"You always knew you couldn't keep him, child," his old teacher says softly, placing a strong hand on his shoulder.

"I know that," he hisses, pulling away. "Damn you."

What's left without John? Without his flatmate, his keeper, his _friend_?

His friend. The best man he's ever known, will ever know. Even Mycroft likes—liked him. And Mycroft has never liked anyone Sherlock liked. And no one has ever been like John. Will ever be like John again.

"Those who took him," his teacher murmurs, kneeling beside him and pulling him close, "they are still alive."

Sherlock raises his head to meet Death's eyes. "Not for long," he promises.


	29. I give you back your heart

**Title**: I give you back your heart

**Fandom**: Highlander/Chuck

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton

**Warnings**: spoilers for season 2 Chuck

**Pairings**: Bryce/Chuck

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 295

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Chuck/White Collar, Neal, Chuck/Bryce, "He's dead, Chuck. Let him go."

**Notes**: I misread the prompt and somehow totally forgot about the White Collar part. Oops.

* * *

Bryce comes back to life with a gasp. He feels the Old Man immediately, before he finishes the first breath.

"Fuck," he coughs.

"Eloquent as always," the man he first knew as Matthew says. "Your deaths have become even more dramatic, Borias." He sounds as American as Chuck. It's weird.

Bryce stares up at him. "I don't suppose you know if Chuck's okay?" he asks, sure the answer will be some variation of _I don't know, and I care even less. Stupid boy._

"Considering the fact you've already come back from the dead once for him..." Matthew pauses, watching Bryce with the sharp eyes that have always seen straight through him. "I don't like the people you've been working for, Bryce," he says. "They don't take proper care of you."

Bryce rolls over, pushing himself to his feet. Matthew stands with him, coming close enough to touch. "It was kind of an accident," Bryce mutters, stretching.

"I'll deal with them," the Old Man says, anger simmering in the words. Bryce hasn't heard that tone in a long time.

Bryce freezes. "Sir?" he says quietly. "It's my mess. I'll clean it up." The last time he heard that tone, an entire village died in one afternoon. Bryce doesn't care about the CIA or Fulcrum or any of that crap, and he never actually did. But he does care about Chuck. And if the Old Man goes on a crusade...

"You'll go back to your mortal," Matthew commands, "and you'll convince him to keep his mouth shut. I'll handle everything else."

There is only one answer to that. Bryce lowers his head and says, "Thank you."

Matthew kisses his forehead. Bryce doesn't think he's meant to hear Matthew murmur, "I wish Kronos had been more like you."


	30. I turn from you, and listen to the wind

**Title**: I turn from you, and listen to the wind

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Coleridge

**Warnings**: prehistory

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 305

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, the world has ended three times.

**Notes**: borrows a little from Jane Lindskold's Athanor novels.

* * *

_K–T extinction event_

He wasn't quite human yet, and going by what he's learned in recent decades, it wasn't the first time, but his earliest memory is the death of the dinosaurs. There was a comet, and a volcano, and so much devastation...

He went to sleep, he remembers that, as a tiny little thing. He slept for a long time, and when he woke, the world was changed. He was changed.

_Atlantis_

He still wasn't human. He was something large and aquatic, and the world calls him a sea-serpent now. Leviathan. He was swimming nearby when a cataclysm shook the world and Atlantis sank into the sea. He followed it down, watched all the little things trying to surface. He ate a few. Studied a few more.

The great light in the sky vanished three times before he walked out of the water, finally a man.

_the flood_

His name was Aaron and he was a man. He watched the storm clouds gather, felt the rain pound down, and went out into a desert that was quickly drowning.

It had been a long time since he wasn't a man, but men couldn't survive the deluge, so he stopped being one.

He survived, of course. And when the water receded, he walked on two legs again.

.

(Dawson and MacLeod ask him what the early years were like. Five millennia. Older than the written word, than civilization, than human memory.

So much older than human memory. Because he isn't an immortal. He doesn't know what he is. And all the times Methos vanishes from the Chronicles… he truly vanishes, and becomes something else.

It's been a long time since the world herself tried to kill the little things living on her. He wonders what, besides him, will come out the other side the next time she does.)


	31. fear of the horsemen

**Title**: fear of the horseman

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton

**Warnings**: AU; character death

**Pairings**: none stated

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 410

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: conscientious

* * *

Only seven people living know that the man called Methos was once Death on a horse. Four of the seven were The Horsemen. One is the only surviving slave. The other two were once students of War and Pestilence.

The students, Methos knows, will not speak of those days. He has found them again, seen how they moved past the Horsemen—unlike Kronos and Silas and Caspian, who still revel in the blood. The students can be allowed to live. The Horsemen will be dealt with. But the slave…

She hunts Kronos, and Kronos hunts Methos. She will bring everything out into the open, three thousand years later when none of it matters anymore.

Nine people know for fact that Methos exists. Seven know he was once Death.

He leaves messages for MacLeod and Joe. Vanishes in the night, goes to where he knows Cassandra will be in two days' time. He thought he loved her, once, three millennia ago. It's why Kronos took her, and why Kronos let her escape.

If she had not resumed the hunt for Kronos, if Methos wasn't sure she'd turn the fury onto him… he let her live once. He and Kronos both did.

But now she is a threat, and Methos knows how to deal with threats. He can run and hide, or—

He finds her mid-morning, in one of the city's gardens, on holy ground. He shoots her and takes her head. The quickening knocks down a tree. After he is recovered, minutes before the authorities will arrive, he carries her body to a car he stole just for this. He puts her and the head in the trunk, next to her Watcher. Both will vanish without a trace.

Methos returns to his life as the infant Adam Pierson. Kronos finds him and Adam Pierson asks MacLeod for help because he never could kill his brothers.

Soon enough, only five people know Methos was Death. One will die fairly quickly; he's only mortal. One will live forever, no matter the cost, even if it's the other three's lives.

Methos has already lived long enough to remember life before language. He survives, whatever the price.

His brothers' students know that, and so will never challenge him. MacLeod…

One day, Death will reap him, unless someone else beats him to it. Death loves no one, and likes even less. And to Death, all immortals are threats.

And Death knows how to handle threats.


	32. four truths only

**Title**: four truths only

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: spoilers for the Horsemen arc

**Pairings**: a smidge of past-Methos/Kronos

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 360

**Point of view**: third

**Highlander**, any, bite the lightning and tell me how it tastes (lyrics from Arctic Monkeys)

* * *

Children have the same questions, all the way from the beginning to the end. He lies and no one notices; any who could tell the signs died long ago, when the sky was young and there were gods. He walked on water and knocked down mountains, and flew to a kingdom beyond the horizon when the sun set. Long ago.

He is the oldest. The first. The last, too, but he tells no one that. None can see through time like he can; all who could passed beyond the ocean and into legend, and he remembers their names. He sings the lament during storms, when his sword bites deep and the lightning returns home.

_thunder-bearer, earth-mother, fire-eater, sea-tamer, I hear you, I know you, I honor you now with this taste of lightning_

There are four always. He follows the old teachings by giving each child four true answers. His name is never one of them.

He drops a handful of dirt onto a grave with no marking. _Silas, my brother, steady as the ground beneath my feet._

He burns a body and a head, scatters the ashes into the wind. _Caspian, my brother, wild as the fire that consumes nations._

He kisses a pair of cold lips, places a head into cold hands, and sinks a coffin filled with rocks. _Kronos, my brother and my son, as dangerous as the roaring ocean, I have loved you best of all._

Lightning flashes in the sky. He sings the lament. The children could not replace the ancients he once knew, when the sun was newborn and they fashioned the world.

Four truths only, and never his name. Never his age. Never the origin of the quickening or the Game.

_thunder-bearer, earth-mother, fire-eater, sea-tamer, I hear you, I know you, I honor you now with this taste of lightning_

All quickenings, from the first to the last, want to return home to him, and he will welcome them all eventually. That is the truth from a time before memory, before life, and there is not even a legend to whisper on the wind.

"Thunder-bearer," he murmurs, staring at the sky.


	33. tyrants tend gardens

**Title**: tyrants tend gardens

**Fandom**: Highlander/Leverage

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Betsy Sholl

**Warnings**: future!fic for both

**Pairings**: post-Methos/Eliot

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 355

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: irony

* * *

A job goes south. Everyone gets out but Parker, and Eliot is about to go back in for her when a familiar voice comes over the com: "Hello, little thief."

Eliot freezes. The others are silent. Parker says, "You have pretty eyes."

Methos—holy fuck, _Methos_, goddamnit all to _hell_—laughs. "You're lucky I was on shift today," he purrs, and that tone, _that tone_. Eliot remembers that tone. he loved and hated and worshipped and feared that tone. "Little thief," Methos says, "if you get to the roof in the next two minutes, I'll let you go."

Parker says, "You'll get in trouble," even as the others and Eliot yell, "Parker, GO!"

Methos laughs again, and Eliot shivers. "This job has grown boring anyway, my dear. Your little break-in is the most excitement in years." A pause, then, "Half a minute gone, little thief."

"Okay," Parker says.

Silence except for her breath. Eliot meets her on the neighboring roof and initiates his first hug in a long time. He doesn't say, _goddamnit, girl, you got any idea how lucky you are?_ or, _fuck, fuck, he's alive, of course he's alive, _or _we're all taking a vacation for the next __**year**_.

He can feel the buzz now, and knows the Old Man is letting him. Couldn't feel it before. Had no idea. Would _never_ have let the team take this job if he knew.

Methos is laughing at him.

Eliot doesn't say, _if it had been anyone else, you'd be dead_. Methos has always had a soft spot for the broken. His favorites were the ones he broke himself, but he'd be able to see how special Parker is. And he'd let her go. Any human guards, any other immortal…

But Death had her in his grasp, and Parker and Hardison and Sophie and Nate have _no idea_.

Death had her and let her go, and Eliot wants to yell at them all, the foolish, _lucky_ children, and he _can't_, and he _knows_ the Old Man is laughing at him about it.

Fuck it. He's taking them all on vacation, whether they want to go or not.


	34. I'm bound to die

**Title**: I'm bound to die, you said, someday

**Fandom**: Highlander/Star Trek reboot

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Sandra Cisneros

**Warnings**: none

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 175

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander/Star Trek Reboot, Methos & Enterprise Crew; Methos gains a reputation for being the only red shirt able to go out on a mission with the main crew and come back relatively unscathed.

* * *

His name is Matt again, and he's considered cannon fodder. He's flying under the radar, trying to live without making too much of a splash. He figures he'll find a nice-enough planet and let himself die.

Except, seven missions in a row, the planets are unbearably awful, so he doesn't die. He saves the captain, first officer, and CMO, and now people are noticing him. Being noticed never ends well.

And then he _does _die and McCoy nearly gets his head blown off trying to protect his body, out of some misplaced sense of loyalty, and Matt wakes up to the McCoy yelling at the natives, trying to hide his fear.

"Fuck," he mutters, lunging to his feet. The natives scream, drop their spears (and, seriously, why are all the planets pre-industrial? he's read records of ones that aren't, but hasn't been to one yet. he tired of living without air-conditioning _way_ before it was invented), and McCoy stares at him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

"This doesn't have to make it into the report, right?" he asks.


	35. Remembered, if outlived

**Title**: Remembered, if outlived

**Fandom**: White Collar/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Dickinson

**Warnings**: pre-series for White Collar; implied past child abuse

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 410

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: immortal

* * *

As a kid, the boy who would be Neal Caffrey wanted what all kids want: to live forever. Barring that, he wanted to be remembered. It didn't matter for what.

A man calling himself Matthew picked Neal up one winter night. "You have potential," Matthew told him. "You'll be great."

Neal expected to be put to work, either his mouth or his ass, but Matthew signed him up for school and taught him about culture and took him fun places like art galleries and museums.

In the six years Neal spent with him, Matthew never changed. He was always firm, but neither kind nor gentle. He always expected the best, so that's what Neal gave him. Neal learned to fight with blades and his fists, and to fire and care for guns. He leaned all the tricks of forgery and confidence schemes.

When Neal was thirteen, he witnessed a duel between Matthew and a very angry woman. The woman—_Cassandra_, Matthew called her—screamed horrible things, but it wasn't until she said, _I'll take the boy and teach him the truth about you_, that Matthew quit playing with her.

Matthew held his sword with one hand and pulled a gun with the other. He shot Cassandra between the eyes and watched emotionlessly as she fell. Once she was down, Matthew swung the sword, taking her head.

Neal couldn't look away. Matthew hid the weapons, swiftly moving to Neal, and pulled him close, led him to safety.

That night, Matthew explained about immortals and rules and forever. Neal wasn't one, he said, but Neal had caught his attention, a smartass kid, and he had to take Neal under his wing.

Matthew never told Neal how old he was. But Neal learned three martial arts, seven languages, and tricks that not even Mozzie would know when they met.

Neal left when he was sixteen, with the promise to call if he ever found too much trouble to handle. Matthew said he'd check in now and again, and that Neal would one day be a legend.

As a boy, Neal had imagined living forever. But all he really wanted was to be remembered.

Matthew would remember him. As long as he lived, Matthew would remember the scared, angry kid he took in, and the greatness he saw in the kid's blue eyes.

Neal'd never know how old Matthew was, but he was sure that if anyone could live forever, Matthew would.


	36. where sundown cannot find us

**Title**: where sundown cannot find us

**Fandom**: Highlander/Chuck

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Dickinson

**Warnings**: spoilers for season 2 of Chuck

**Pairings**: Bryce/Chuck

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 190

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: emergency

* * *

Bryce is dead again. _For good this time_, the Old Man says. _Move on to a new identity_, he orders. Bryce Larkin is dead and buried.

Brendan Lafferty spent all his life in Miami, Florida. Orphaned son of a couple who can trace their families to the Mayflower and Jamestown, respectively. Brendan Lafferty has never left Florida, so he sure as shit never went to Stanford or joined the CIA or fell in love with a geek named Chuck.

And Brendan Lafferty doesn't keep up with the geek named Chuck. So there's no way he hears about a black-op meant to vanish Chuck. So Brendan can't ask the Old Man for help, because Brendan has never met the Old Man. Neither has Bryce, though he'd be of far more use than wimpy Brendan.

Borias calls up the closest thing to a father he's ever had and says, _Mathias, please. I love him_.

And Mathias says, _You foolish boy. I'll see you in LA_.

Brendan Lafferty takes a vacation. Bryce Larkin is still dead. And Borias catches a flight to Los Angeles, where he'll change Chuck Bartowski's life again.


	37. the crimson rags of war

**Title**: the crimson rags of war

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Shiloh

**Warnings**: AUish

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 170

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, A fair fight is a sign of poor tactics

* * *

Duncan is an idealist. He knows there are people who won't fight fair, but he will meet them head-on anyway. It'll get him killed one day.

Methos will probably avenge him, unless he's the one to take the boy's head.

In all his long life, Methos has never fought a fair fight. When he pulls his sword, everything has already been planned out. He knows exactly how things will go. That was true when he first met MacLeod and was being hunted by Kalas, and was true when Kronos fell with the other Horsemen, and will be true in the challenge that kills Methos.

Methos has died before; no one hunts for a dead man. And the truest of survivors will never fight fair.

Duncan can't understand that. But Methos has outlived ideals and virtues and any belief in honor or mankind's better nature. Methos will kill anyone to see another sunrise. Even himself.

He thinks a few times that Joe gets it, but in the end he's wrong.


	38. Out of the forest I come with my flowers

**Title**: Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Carol Ann Duffy

**Warnings**: angsty

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 175

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: author's choice, the errors of the past are the wisdom of the future

* * *

Duncan asks a thousand questions, not a single one he hasn't heard before.

_why are we here? are the legends real? have you walked with gods? is there a purpose? what wisdom will you share, o ancient of a million lives?_

He says what he's always said and does what he's always done, and the myth, as always, fades in light of reality.

Methos could share a thousand parables. Lessons he's learned over the eons, stories to warn today's children. Words for Joe to write, to record the wisdom of the ancient.

Duncan would listen. For awhile. Until what Methos has to say challenges what he's always known, and then Methos will be a liar.

Methos is ancient. He's done all this before. No one ever learns from the past except those who live to see it become the future, and so far, no one has managed that except Methos.

Maybe one day, Duncan will be old enough to listen and understand. Most days, Methos doubts it.

(He's lived long enough to know.)


	39. I will wait, unleashed and unheard

**Title**: I will wait, unleashed and unheard

**Fandom**: Highlander (shades of _Reign of Fire_, maybe)

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton

**Warnings**: spoilers for the Horsemen arc

**Pairings**: mentions of Methos/Kronos

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 445

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Like hearing a growl in the dark, but [insert name here] is the only one who knows that isn't just a bear - there really _are_ dragons, and it's pure luck that it's in a relatively good mood and just growled a little...

* * *

Some stories have been around for as long as people've had language. Wolves weren't called wolves then, and sheep didn't quite exist yet, but the wolf in sheep's clothing? It's an old tale.

Methos told it the first time, and it wasn't a legend then. Or a strategy that won wars, that trapped even the most wary. It was just an anecdote from three camps over. From a camp that wasn't there anymore. From the camp that insulted a canny predator and didn't even realize it. A dozen hunters, gone. History has no recollection of them at all. Even Methos doesn't remember them anymore.

He wasn't Methos yet, either. Kronos had yet to be born; Kronos, the child who named the ancient. Even then, Methos was old. He doesn't know how old—he'll never know. Sometimes he remembers great monsters, and the dinosaur bones in museums seem familiar, but if asked, he always says five thousand years. Five thousand, he thinks, watching schoolchildren on the playground swing, is so small a number.

There are things older than wolves. More dangerous than wolves. Pestilence, Famine, and War… were just schoolchildren on the playground, and had no idea what looked at them from Death's eyes.

Sometimes, Methos thinks he remembers monsters in the cave of his earliest days, terrific beasts of fire and wing. It would be a long time before he could put a name to those shadows, but he watches the schoolchildren on the playground and thinks back. It was after the dark time, but before the next great creatures rose up, and dragons slept in the cave. And Methos shared their warmth, gazing up in wonder.

He called himself Dragon-Slayer for a time, but it was a lie. He never once hurt a dragon. Sometimes, he hopes they'll remember that, when they wake.

And MacLeod and Joe and a thousand other children ask questions they wouldn't like the answers to, and Methos is more than a man, more than a wolf, more than a predator. He has killed monsters and walked with monsters and slept safe in the talons of a dragon. (Or maybe that's a story. He is a masterful liar, you know.)

Maybe he is simply a killer hidden in the hoodie of a graduate student, maybe he's Death walking down the halls.

Maybe he first told the story of the wolf in sheep's skin, with the blood of a dozen hunters still drying on his hands.

He is the only being alive who is not a child on the playground, and there's a reason for that.

(And when they wake up… Death will smile, watching them take to the skies.)


	40. full of wonder and confusion

**Title**: full of wonder and confusion

**Fandom**: Highlander/Glee

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Diane Ackerman

**Warnings**: takes place during late season 2

**Pairings**: mentions of Kurt/Blaine

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 450

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: something involving a Glee character and Queen's "Who Want to Live Forever," prefereably as the character discovers they're immortal..

* * *

"Well, now," he hears. "Isn't this interesting."

Kurt doesn't take his eyes off the douchebag holding a sword to his neck, but the douchebag says, "Go away, or wait your turn. I'll deal with you next."

The new guy laughs. "Are you so new you can't tell he's not even an infant yet? He's still just a preemie."

The douchebag blinks. "What?" he says, lowering the blade. Kurt stays completely still, but the douchebag turns, so Kurt lunges away.

"I'd suggest you run, preemie," the new guy says, and Kurt doesn't even look back as he does.

0o0

An hour later, someone knocks on the door. Dad and Carole are on a date, and Finn's doing something barely legal with Puck. (Kurt is their alibi when they get caught.) Blaine had an emergency practice with the Warblers, so Kurt has been alone in his house, trying not to panic. He hasn't really succeeded.

And now someone is knocking on the door. Kurt stares from around the corner, deciding if he should open it or not. It could be the douchebag. Or worse.

"I know you're there, preemie," he hears. "Open the door before I pick the lock."

Kurt swallows. He doesn't move.

"Fine, then," his earlier savior says, and proceeds to pick the lock.

Looking around for a weapon, just in case, Kurt can't help but hear the guy muttering to himself, something about boy-scouts and delusions of heroism and _goddamn, Duncan, you're contagious, who knew_.

As he steps in, shorter than Kurt expected, but attractively angular and pale, with an unforgettable nose, he says, "Call me Ben, preemie."

"Kurt," Kurt says. "I'm Kurt."

"Cute, too," Ben adds. "Possibly cute enough to survive, though we never can tell about those things, you know?"

Kurt honestly has no reply to that. He feels himself blushing, though. Ben smirks.

0o0

Kurt doesn't believe Ben about the whole immortal thing until Ben cuts his palm with a knife he pulls out of nowhere and it heals instantaneously with little bolts of lightning. He stares for a good while before Ben says, "Look, kid, I'm hungry. You reorder your worldview while I find some food, yeah?"

Ben wanders down the hall, looking for the kitchen, humming—"Really?" Kurt yells after him. "Is that song really appropriate right now?"

Ben laughs, and then he actually starts singing the words.

Kurt sighs, mutters, "What the hell?" and joins in.

_There's no time for us  
There's no place for us  
What is this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away from us_

_Who wants to live forever_  
_Who wants to live forever...?_

He'll worry about everything later. For now, he's hungry, too, so he heads for the kitchen.


	41. may my heart's truth still be sung

**Title**: may my heart's truth still be sung

**Fandom**: Highlander/White Collar

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Dylan Thomas

**Warnings**: AU

**Pairings**: pre-Neal/Peter

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 200

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander/White Collar, Neal, Methos, Peter, somehow regaining Peter's trust has been harder than it was with Methos

* * *

Neal sits on Peter's front-porch, leaning against the door. El told him it'd be awhile; Peter's still too furious to even look at him.

It wasn't like the bullet did much damage, and he played it off as it not having even hit him. There's no reason for Peter to be so angry.

Methos had never been this difficult. Methos had taught him to survive, at any price, and hadn't expected anything but a head's-up if he ever decided to go hunting. Not that Methos would be an option, if he did; he preferred easy prey. Methos knew all his tricks, and Neal was smart enough to realize the Old Man hadn't shared half of his.

Neal had loved Methos. He can own up to that now, decades after the fact. Methos knew it, too; said that all students hero-worship their teachers for a time. Just until the glow wears off.

But Neal _loves _Peter. Enough to stay. Enough to endanger his own safety. Enough to sit on the porch and wait for Peter to let him back in.

He sighs. Methos would have only one question: _is he worth it, child?_

And yeah. Peter really is. Neal can wait.


	42. another year gone

**Title**: another year gone

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: depressing

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 100

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Any, Any, He doesn't know when his birthday changed from a celebration of surviving another year into a reminder that he was still, unfortunately, alive.

* * *

_Another year older_, he thinks, and drains down the whiskey.

_Another year gone_, he thinks, and looks around the bar, at all the young pups.

_Another year_, he thinks. _Another goddamned, fucking year._

Another year surviving, five thousand and ten thousand and a hundred thousand and more. The oldest man in the world.

Today, he's tired. And weary. And wishes he'd just quit fighting.

Tomorrow, he'll wake up and he'll only be five thousand, and he'll be glad to be alive.

Today, right now, he thinks, _Another year gone,_ and motions for a refill and regrets everything he's ever done.


	43. history is the killing of kings

**Title**: history is the killing of kings

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: spoilers for all of Highlander

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 180

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, leading does not interest him. He knows he was born to be second-in-command.

* * *

Methos has been a lord, a king, and a god. All of them were fun, for a time, but he lost interest in a throne long ago.

Tyrants are overthrown. Kings are assassinated. Gods are brought low.

Methos endures. Never again will he be the face of the regime, answering prayers or speaking to the masses. He is the plotter, the planner, the one who sees a dozen steps in advance. Of the Horsemen, there is a reason he is the only one left. Methos is patient.

He _can _lead. He has before, he will again. And maybe one day, he'll find someone with Kronos' passion, MacLeod's strength, someone worthy in all aspects, and he'll put that child on a throne. He will guard the child, he will guide the child, he will be the power behind a figurehead…

Methos will not be overthrown, or assassinated, or brought low. He is the shadow controlling everything, inescapable and uncatchable, the whisper in the dark that rules nations.

He endures. He survives. History is the killing of kings, and he is history walking.


	44. dogs have owners cats have staff

**Title**: dogs have owners. cats have staff.

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 115

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: any, any, it's amazing what a cat will do for you when you speak to it in classical Egyptian

* * *

There is a language Methos knows, forgotten by everyone else, from a place so long ago... well. Cats were worshipped once. He remembers. He remembers the second wave, too, when they tried to reclaim their places and ended as witch familiars, punished just like their mistresses and masters.

Cats have never been subservient to anyone. Not the ones still in the wild, magnificent and beautiful, or the 'domestic' ones with human servants. Every time he hears someone gush about their 'pet cat,' Methos has to hold in a scoff.

He remembers. He was there. Even the most ancient form of Egyptian is slightly wrong.

There's a reason cats in the wild don't meow.


	45. the alliance of the ages

**Title**: the alliance of the ages

**Fandom**: Inception/White Collar/Highlander

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: AU

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 235

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Inception/White Collar/Red/Highlander, Arthur + Neal as Frank's fraternal twin sons, the day they find out that Arthur and Neal are both immortal

* * *

Arthur died first, though neither of them knew it. His first death, at twenty-two, involved falling down a flight of stairs and landing wrong, snapping his neck. He woke up twelve hours later with no one the wiser, and he thought he'd only been knocked unconscious.

Neal died four months later, when one of his marks got the better of him. When he woke up, he figured he'd hit his head dodging bullets; he always hated guns after that.

Arthur and Neal didn't see each other for the better part of eight years, and when they met up again, they'd both been taught the basics. They each guessed when they actually died; both of their guesses were wrong, but no one would ever know.

When Arthur felt the approaching immortal, he moved to place his back against the wall and had his hand on his gun; he could play fair, he often chose not to.

Neal, meanwhile, acted carefree, waltzing through the airport like he owned the entire continent. Most of his kind, he'd learned, couldn't tell where the buzz came from. In the crowded building, no one would be able to pinpoint it as him.

When they saw each other, they knew. Once getting past the shock of realizing their twin had died without them knowing, both were ecstatic, because, if they played their cards right, they'd never have to die again.


	46. For now you are here, you are mine

**Title**: For now you are here, you are mine

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Sandra Cisneros

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: a smidge of implied Methos/Duncan

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 360

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, college applications

* * *

His favorite part is the planning. Coming up with a background, sketching out the details of a life. A family history fifteen generations back, husbands and wives and children and siblings, grandparents and aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and pets. He knows that not all immortals go to such trouble - but that is why he is the oldest.

He changes with the times. He masters technology and lingo and fully immerses himself. Duncan might say otherwise... but Duncan is a lifetime ago. Duncan met Adam Pierson, a shy scholar who lived in the stacks and knew nothing past the turn of the century. Duncan met Adam Pierson, a little boy in love with ghosts.

Kronos wanted his brother back, but Death is just like Doc Adams and Adam Pierson and a thousand others, ten thousand others, shades and shadows, created and discarded with care.

Fifteen generations ago, his many times great-grandmother was born in Baltimore and his many times great-grandfather hadn't crossed the Atlantic with his family yet.

Matt Bennison submits applications to all the major American colleges, with plans to pursue a chemical engineering degree. It's one of the new things he hasn't fully mastered yet. It won't be hard, though, and actually seems quite fun.

Matt Bennison is an orphan; he survived the house fire that killed his parents. His older sister committed suicide not long after. Both of his parents were only children, and his great aunt was too old to take in an angry and depressed teenager. Matt Bennison spent two years in the foster care system and is a success story: he turned his life around from his furious lashing out, realized he loved science and math, and is going to make a name for himself one day.

(He will die young, of course. Possibly in a car crash in the mountains. But that's at least a decade away and needn't be worried about now.)

Matt Bennison is accepted to every college he applies to and chooses MIT. He is a wide-eyed freshman, taken under the wings of a dozen different upperclassmen, and is excited for the first time since he left Duncan.


	47. the moss had reached our lips

**Title**: Until the moss had reached our lips and covered up our names

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; quotes from "Comes a Horseman"; title from Dickinson

**Warnings**: post-series

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 235

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Any, any, _I've been through a thousand yesterdays / not every step I can retrace_

* * *

His journals are a treasure-trove for the children grasping with nervous fingers, guessing at what once was. If anyone could find them, could read them - five thousand years of knowledge, of history. Longer even, but that is when writing started.

(There was writing before that, of course. Nothing any of today's children would recognize, but writing nonetheless.)

Ask him a question; he'll tell a lie. Call him a liar; he'll smile.

_You know what I was? Death. Death on a horse._

The history books are full of his exploits. Can he be trusted? Of course not. Is he a killer? _Yes. Oh, yes. Is that what you want to hear?_

History was. His story is. Call him the first, the oldest, possibly the greatest - he survives. Pyramids crumble and mountains erode, and he was there before them, during them, after them... thousands of years. Longer. Five thousand and more still.

Call him a liar. Call him a god. Both and neither and always.

History remembers him with a thousand names. He has walked a thousand roads, a thousand times, five thousand years.

He is older than writing. Older than fire. Older than any language the children, grasping with nervous fingers, would understand.

(_How old are you?_one such child asks, dear honorable Duncan MacLeod.

_Five thousand,_ he says. _That's the first I remember._

Old, he thinks. Child, you don't know the meaning of the word.)


	48. they sicken of the calm

**Title**: they sicken of the calm who know the storm

**Fandom**: Highlander/Supernatural

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Dorothy Parker

**Warnings**: pre-series for both; a smidge AU for Supernatural; mentions of torture, character death, and slavery;

**Pairings**: implied Gabriel/Methos

**Rating**: PG13

**Wordcount**: 635

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Supernatural/Highlander, Gabriel + Methos, five times Methos meet him and one time Gabriel told him he was an angel

* * *

_i_  
He has been walking for so long it's all he remembers. The light comes and goes, and he walks. He walks and walks and walks, until his four legs become two as he rises, and he walks and walks until he sees other things like him.

Similar, but not the same, though he won't realize that for some time.

"Well, aren't you a treat?" a pale, winged thing says. "Haven't seen one like you before."

He keeps walking. The thing leaves.

_ii_  
He is attacked on the edge of the territory. His attacker is young; he sees that at a glance. Wielding a stick, the boy swings again and again, but compared to the four-legged beasts that have been trying since before his memory begins, the boy is disappointingly slow.

"You'll have to take his head," a carrion-eater says, ears pricked forward.

He puts the boy on his back and hits his throat with a good-sized rock until his head pops off.

"Remember that feeling," the carrion-eater says, slinking forward. It licks its chops, mouth open in a toothy grin. "You'll need it to survive."

He leaves the carrion-eater to his feast.

_iii_  
He is Death on a Horse, Methos the legend, Methos the monster, Methos the mask. His brothers are so young and think him the same, and they ride and they rule, out of the sun into the horizon.

One captive watches him with a smirk. "My lord," he calls to Methos, and Methos turns, Kronos following his gaze. "My lord," he says. "You've come a long way."

Methos just looks at him, at his toothy grin and the shadow of wings at his shoulder.

"You don't know your place," Kronos growls. Methos doesn't stop him from punishing the captive; the next day, another corpse is left on the dirt as they ride.

_iv_  
He is nameless, slave to the cruelest master in the land. It isn't penance; he was bored. So far, he hasn't learned anything he didn't already know, when it comes to dealing pain. His master is a babe in arms compared to who he once rode a pale horse.

A pretty slip of a thing curls up against him in the slave quarters. "I'm frightened," she whispers. "Can you help me escape?"

He looks into her eyes, seeing white and gold and a dawn he can't remember. "Just start running," he tells her softly. "Don't ever stop."

She touches his cheek, finger tracing a scratch that healed the moment he got it. "Haven't seen one like you before," she says, and kisses his forehead.

In the morning, she's gone. No alarm is ever raised.

_v_  
He is Benjamin, on trial for witchcraft. A dozen have already been executed by burning. He really hates burning.

Out the corner of his eye, he keeps seeing a shadow.

He is found guilty, of course, sentenced to die at sundown.

When night comes, they prepare him. Before the fire catches, a shadow rushes through, grabbing him.

"Silly man," the shadow says, setting him down by the ocean, far from any town. "You should be more careful."

The shadow leaves. He waits by the water till dawn, and then he starts walking.

_vi_  
"Well, now," a voice booms out behind him. "Ain't you a treat."

He raises an eyebrow, turning. The man grinning at him is short with dark hair and dark eyes, and he has wings of shadow. "I know you," Methos says.

"We've never been formally introduced," the man says, stepping forward. "I'm Gabriel." His grin broadens. "_The_Gabriel."

The wings flare out, filling the room. Only Methos sees them.

"Your daddy's got a message for you," Gabriel says. "You'll probably find it interesting."

"Yes," Methos muses, reaching for the closer wing, smirking at Gabriel's surprised sigh. "I suppose I will."


	49. die not, poor Death

**Title**: die not, poor Death

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Donne

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 125

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Duncan/Methos, the last one standing. . .There can be only one. . .

* * *

He had been Death on a Horse. Before that, he was a monster, and before that a god. He is the oldest thing yet living... and he will continue to live.

He hadn't intended to get so close to Duncan, but he does not hesitate. He has always known how relationships between immortals go, the only way it can end.

"Have you lived, MacLeod?" he asks. "Have you grown stronger? It is another day."

"Methos," Duncan says. "Quit stalling."

"As you wish," Methos murmurs. The plethora of quickenings have gone to Duncan's head. There is little left of one of the greatest men in the world.

MacLeod never once saw Methos' true skill with the blade. "Farewell, old friend," Methos says.

There can be only one.


	50. the death which one day will deprive you

**Title**: the death which one day will deprive you of me

**Fandom**: Highlander/White Collar

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Lord Byron

**Warnings**: character death; future!fic

**Pairings**: Peter/Elizabeth

**Rating**: PG13

**Wordcount**: 240

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: White Collar, Neal[/any], _five __years __in __the __wrong, __I __am __assured, __my __name __to __you __is __just __another __word_

* * *

From the balcony, Neal watches the sun cross the sky and sink below the horizon. He hasn't moved all day. No one is looking for him; they have bigger fish to fry.

Not that they'll find what they're looking for. It's in pieces, scattered far and wide.

Neal's phone is dangling from his fingers. Hughes called earlier. Jones, Diana. Moz is still in hiding, and June is with Elizabeth at the hospital. The doctor said El should wake up soon. But she'll wake up to a world gone mad, a world without Peter.

No world should be without Peter.

The sun sets. Neal dials a number only three people in the world have.

"What do you need?" his teacher, his master asks.

"I need to rest," he answers, eyes squeezed shut to keep in the grief trying to swallow him.

"Come home, child," his brother, his father says. "I'll meet you at the station."

"Thank you," he breathes, dropping the phone.

0o0

In the morning, when Clinton goes to Neal's loft because Elizabeth is asking for him, the apartment is empty. Clinton has no idea if anything is missing. Neal's tracker is left on the coffee table.

Not much energy is spent looking for Neal.

The men who attacked Peter and Elizabeth are found, eventually. Not all of them, though; a skull here, a thigh there, assorted ribs somewhere else.

Diana and Clinton have their suspicions, but the case is never solved.


	51. I am older than you, Man

**Title**: I am older than you, Man.

**Disclaimer**: not my character; title from Brian McCabe

**Warnings**: abstract; primordial!Methos

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 165

**Point** **of** **view**: thirdish

**Notes**: this started as poem. I'm not really sure what the final product is.

* * *

Some things have always been. These things he remembers –

_Light, heat, water _

_Water from the sky, from the earth, from skin and eyes _

_Pain, pain, pain around and in and through and out _

_Legs and wings, fingers and claws, fins before all _

_Old, old, old like a mountain, old like the ocean, old like the wind_

_Older than you, older than them, older than old_

_Children but a speck of dust, children buried and burnt_

_Light, heat, water, pain, swimming walking flying_

_Language, written and spoken, forgotten _

_A name before names were, a name no soul knows_

_Lightning. Blood lightning, sky lightning, lightning tasted and thrown_

_A throne. A sword and a scepter and a scythe_

_A pale horse, before horses were_

_A horse of lightning, and a scythe _

_Swimming walking flying_

_Older than the dirt beneath his feet_

_Older than the water _

_Older than fire _

_Older than pain _

_Older than time_

Questions asked. There is an answer he does not give.


	52. Speak as they please

**Title**: Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Browning

**Warnings**: future!ficish

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 300

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, Adam Pierson has a day job but sometimes Methos can't resist using skills that Adam doesn't have.

* * *

Adam Pierson is a thirty-four old doctor of linguistics. He's also a six year old immortal.

Adam Pierson can speak a dozen languages like they're his native English, is conversational in twenty more, and muddle his way through seven others. He can read all of the Indo-European languages with ease.

Adam Pierson is Duncan MacLeod's newest student, and he does not have MacLeod's fighting skill. He's been lucky, so far: he hasn't needed to fight. He's mediocre with a sword. If he gets in too close, he will die.

Adam Pierson's Watcher doesn't think he'll last long.

0o0

Dr. Pierson works at the British Museum. He's translating a tablet (or, trying to; the language has yet to be identified) and he was in a fight last night. His Watcher reported it: Pierson won his first challenge only by the skin of his teeth. He defeated a two-century old drifter. He's been odd this morning – short-tempered, cautious, nervous. His colleagues have asked him what's wrong; he said family troubles and threw himself into his work.

Even the most senior of Pierson's colleagues would require two lifetimes, maybe more, to translate the tablet. It is a language that died out over ten thousand years ago. It has no similarities to any language still in use.

It is, in fact, a prank played by the world's oldest man. He carved the tablet three hundred years ago and left it by the megalith called Stonehenge, just to see what the baby-archeologists would make of it. They're still scratching their heads, giving all the newbies this tablet to play with.

If Pierson actually was thirty-four, actually was six, he'd never know what this tablet said.

If he hadn't written it himself, he'd have no idea.

He just finds it humorous that the joke is still funny.


	53. let him never die

**Title**: let him never die

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic; AUish

**Pairings**: implied past-Methos/Duncan

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 95

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, changing identities

* * *

When it's time it's time, and he always knows. The slant of sunlight on the floor, being cut off at a stop sign, too many people angry at him, or simple boredom.

Something different, each and every time, across millennia.

Adam Pierson dies on a balmy spring day, after Duncan MacLeod looks at him and sees only Death swinging a blade astride a pale horse.

Matt Benson is born at 1:23 in the afternoon during a spring rainstorm. One day, he'll die and someone new will rise from his ashes.

For now, Matt Benson walks.


	54. the only glimpse we are permitted

**Title**: the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; the painting mentioned is _The __Horse __Fair_ by Rosa Bonheur; title from Helen Keller

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 425

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Any, any, a whiter shade of pale

**Note**: I have seen _The __Horse __Fair _in person. It is amazing. I want it for my own wall.

* * *

Methos has skill as a painter. Of course he does. He has eternity to master anything, so he has mastered everything. But the truly crafty always keep something back.

Adam Pierson was not an artist. A doodler, certainly, but nothing impressive. And Ben Matheson is nothing to write home about, either, but he's loved the arts all his life. So when his sponsor Duncan MacLeod calls him early one morning to invite him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, well. He could refuse, of course. But a good little boy wouldn't, and Ben is so very young, and desirous of an adult's praise and approval.

"Ben!" MacLeod calls. "Come see this one."

"And who had the clever idea to take the children to the museum today?" Ben murmurs to Mr. Dawson, hurrying to MacLeod's side with an exuberant smile.

Mr. Dawson's guffaw follows him, to a huge painting of horses. "Gorgeous," Ben breathes. MacLeod claps him on the shoulder, and Ben would say something more, but his eyes are following the lines of the horses. He wouldn't be surprised if they thundered right off the wall.

Ben has never ridden a horse. He's been poor all his life, and lived on the streets for three months, and was caught by the police, turned over to CPS, and fostered by a couple determined to see him excel. And then he was chosen by MacLeod, and sent to one of the best schools in the country, and here he is, staring at the most wonderful thing he's ever seen, in utter awe.

Ben can only marvel at the horses. They look so strong. He wonders what it'd be like to ride them, and if he had an audience beyond Mr. Dawson, he'd ask MacLeod, and hang onto every word.

Methos, though. Methos knows. He misses riding across a plain, his brothers abreast of him, out of the sun and into the horizon, the world theirs for the taking. Ben will go back to his dorm and dream of horses. He'll check out horse books from the library, watch videos online, and fall head-over-heels in love.

But Methos. Methos will go to the place where home is tonight, pull out a well-hidden sketchbook, and breathe life into his favorite pale mare again.

"Isn't it something?" MacLeod asks.

Ben nods enthusiastically. He's never seen a more amazing sight in his short, pain-filled life.

Methos… Methos is a master of horses. In his next life, he'll return to them and ride out of the sun, into the horizon.


	55. without hope of end

**Title**: without hope of end

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Milton

**Warnings**: none

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 170

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos/ Duncan or Joe, Being friends with Methos is like a carnival: fun when it's not terrifying and all the games are rigged.

* * *

Sometimes, just chatting with the Old Man, Joe actually forgets who – _what_ - he _really _is. He's not that shy kid anymore, more like a kid brother. Wicked sense of humor, sly eyes, more than happy to be the butt of a joke -

And then something happens. For a split second. Those eyes sharpen, or his voice has a hint of thunder, and there's _something_ about his bearing, something _coiling_, preparing to attack -

And then it's gone. And he's just Adam, just a guy, with an unpaid tab and a smart mouth.

Joe never reacts to those glimpses. He tries to ignore them, to forget them. Because if he thinks about it... there's a _reason _Adam is the oldest, and a reason why Mac will never reach that same age.

So Joe chats with the Old Man, and ribs him like he's just a kid brother, and ignores the apex predator mocking Mac's taste in beer, the shudder working its way up his spine, and those sharp eyes.


	56. perhaps I am secret

**Title**: perhaps I am secret

**Disclaimer**: not my character; title from Milton

**Warnings**: none

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 135

**Point ****of ****view**: first

**Prompt**: Author's choice, any, I am the fabric of history, you are a fictional stain. (quote taken from Epic Rap Battles of History)

* * *

Live long enough, little boy, and you'll learn a terrifying truth: nothing is a lie.

Ach, don't look at me like that. You asked. I answered.

Nothing is a lie, there is no truth, the sun will rise and stars explode, I rode a horse in your Bible, I commanded an army in your history book, I forged and wielded a sword in your museum, I sat on a throne in a country you've never heard of, and -

Well.

Name a path; I've walked it. Name a language; I spoke it. Name a way to die; I've experienced it.

Name a land and I ruled it.

I am _old_, child. You don't know the meaning of the word. History is my story.

Maybe that's a lie. Not like you'll live long enough to know for sure.


	57. the length of a life

**Title**: the length of a life

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: primordial!Methos

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 145

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos,

There is no meaning to our world.  
There is no meaning to those of us living there.  
We meaningless beings ponder the world,  
Though realization of the meaninglessness itself means nothing.

* * *

Live five hundred years, kid, and you'll learn how short life is.

Live a thousand, twice that, three times more - you'll learn how nothing ever _really _changes.

Live four thousand, five... you get so tired, kid. So tired.

Live longer. Well. No one can live longer, right? Who ever heard tell of the man who lived ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand - or, impossibly, a million?

Not possible. Of course not. That long would drive a man, a woman, _anything _mad.

So live your five hundred years. See how short life is. Watch out for those who would steal your head, for a paltry few decades more.

Five thousand... no one can live longer that. Of course not. Such longevity... why it would drive someone mad, and those who are mad die quickly.

Don't they, kid? Of course they do.


	58. take away my breath

**Title**: though a sword should take away my breath

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Ovid

**Warnings**: AU; darkish

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 270

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos (+Any), That "Game" thing never caught on.

* * *

In the end, there will be only one.

0o0

Today, his name is Ben Adamson. He's a college student, majoring in mechanical engineering, and he is twenty-one.

Yesterday, he was Matt Bennison and a janitor at a middle school in Santé Fe.

Tomorrow, he'll be Adam Pierce and a serial killer who is never caught. He'll kill twenty-nine people in twenty-nine states, all men in their prime, with no connections between them.

But today, he is simply the top of his class and raising his hand to answer.

0o0

A thousand and a half years ago, the Watchers were massacred and all their records lost. Two thousand years ago, three men were killed, their bodies burnt, and their ashes scattered to the wind. Three thousand years ago, Methos gave Kronos a choice and Kronos chose to follow him. Four thousand years ago, a woman asked if there was any reason for the existence of the ones who could not die. A man shrugged and replied that he knew of none.

Five thousand years ago, a man walked out of the desert.

Six thousand years ago, seven, eight, ten, a hundred – of course, there is no man from so long ago alive.

That would be impossible.

0o0

In the end, there will be only one.

But only the one knows that. The rest do not know of the death that stalks them, the pale rider older than time, and just as merciless.

Today, he is a boy, all of twenty-one and excited to learn.

Yesterday he was a warrior. Tomorrow he will be a killer.

There isn't a soul alive who knows his true name.


	59. the waters of death are deep

**Title**: the waters of death are deep

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Gilgamesh

**Warnings**: none

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 90

**Point****of****view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos /& Duncan, to bring to maturity or a state fit for use

* * *

Given enough time, MacLeod could be a true friend, the kind Methos hasn't had since the Horsemen rode together.

Unfortunately, Methos really can't see MacLeod living that long. The truly old, after all, need to bend and compromise and run. And MacLeod… well. Maybe if Joe were immortal, he'd live that long.

But MacLeod is the kind to burn brightly and then burn out; he probably won't reach a thousand. And Methos will raise a glass in his honor, and take the head of whoever took his, and that'll be that.


	60. nothing I say will be enough

**Title**: If you want, I'll tell you, but nothing I say will be enough

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Carolyn Forche

**Warnings**: Methos being vague

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 165

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, "While I can honestly say that I told you the truth, but I may have told you not all of it."

* * *

Methos was Death on a Horse. He doesn't deny that (well, not any longer). Methos has put kings on thrones, given warlords vast empires, and crowned emperors of a dozen nations.

Methos has destroyed even more than that.

Let the children ask their questions. Let them wonder, let them rage, let them demand vengeance for people long dead, who screamed in languages no one alive can speak.

Let come who may. Methos was Death on a Horse for a thousand years, and he's been a thousand other things besides.

_The truth?_ you ask. _Dear child, there is no truth. Only shades of a lie._

Death doesn't change, no matter how many eons pass. Death with a rock, a sword, a bow, or a gun. Death with nuclear bombs and poison gas and any other thing humans can invent.

Death no longer rides a horse, and that is a truth.

Death is dead. That's what he promised young MacLeod, and that is a lie.


	61. My bones hold a stillness

**Title**: My bones hold a stillness

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Sylvia Plath

**Warnings**: Methos rambling

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 200

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, I have prayed to so many gods, it simply god boring after a while. So I became one myself

* * *

Methos remembers when the wind was a god, the rain, the sky and the dirt. Spirits were prayed to, and cloth, and women who bore children, and the men who fathered them.

Methos died and opened his eyes, and he knew then that he was a god.

He never worshipped anything else again, and he slew the ones who were like him, gaining their power. Gods need sacrifices of blood and lightning, and he was the only god walking.

Even now, sitting in Joe's bar and laughing with MacLeod – he knows there are no gods. Nothing but him, and the children following in his wake, always floundering, always thinking themselves new and better and the best.

Methos remembers when gods were everywhere, and he remembers waking after death. He remembers Death and Pestilence and Famine and War, gods on horseback, and the world they conquered.

Methos is the oldest. Not the first, he's pretty sure, but the greatest, since he's still here and no one else is.

And after the next great war, after the nuclear holocaust when the little people are screaming for a strong hand to lead them to safety…

Methos will become a god again.


	62. wolves make the best shepherds

**Title**: wolves make the best shepherds

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: primordial!Methos; AUish

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 360

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, sometimes bad guys make the best good guys

* * *

MacLeod cannot see past Death; Methos understands and forgives the fault. Many people, he knows, would be the same.

But Joe, dear Joe, stares at him from across the bar, and says, "It was a different time."

Methos nods, adding, "A different world."

That is a lie. The world has not changed. The time, yes, because of the people themselves, the bleating sheep.

The world never changes. He was Death before he used the name; he is Death now, smiling at Joe, in this day of bombs that could destroy half the world in one go.

Many people would call him the greatest villain of all, Death and his gleaming sword, Death and his glinting scythe, Death the Pale Rider. Death the mastermind, Death the great planner, _Death_.

_Yes_, he doesn't tell Joe, _yes, I formed the Horsemen. Yes, I commanded Kronos so gently he never knew. Yes, I killed them when they were a liability, for all that MacLeod swung the deathblows. Yes, it was me, all of it._

And he doesn't tell Joe, _I've done it before. I'll do it again._

MacLeod is so young. Joe is younger still. Methos is older than comprehension of age, and he will grow older still.

Methos is not the villain of this story. Yes, he once put down entire villages, overran nations, rode a pale horse and ruled the world.

But Death does not care, is the thing. It's what MacLeod can't understand, and though Joe tries, it's beyond him, as well.

Villains are villains because they have a plan, and they _know _it's wrong, and it'll hurt however many innocents get in the way, and they keep going anyway. But Death doesn't see 'right' or 'wrong.' Death kills indiscriminately.

And whenever he needs to, Methos will swing back onto that horse.

So he assures Joe, "I was different then. Morals as you know them didn't exist yet. Crimes now weren't crimes then, and of course, I'll never do such a thing again."

Joe smiles, relieved and at ease.

MacLeod will take a little more time, and probably won't be alive when Methos reveals it all to be a lie.


	63. I cross so many brooks in the world

**Title**: I cross so many brooks in the world

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Denise Levertov

**Warnings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**:

**Point of view**: third

**Wordcount**: 120

**Prompt**: Highlander, Duncan and Methos and Joe, old is a comparative term

* * *

Humans would consider MacLeod old. Most of them would consider Joe old, too.

MacLeod thinks Methos is old. Amanda thinks Methos is old. Rebecca and Cassandra and Darius all thought Methos old.

Kronos and Silas and Caspian, ancient themselves, all knew Methos was old.

_Old_, Methos tells Joe, _is all relative._

He stares down into the Grand Canyon. He daydreams about the ocean and all the life she swallowed, including what had been his before he went to the desert.

Joe will wither and die. MacLeod will try to finish a fight and lose his head.

Methos will walk into the desert and out of the sea.

_Old_, he whispers, watching the sun. _Tell me what you think that means_.


	64. to the victor go the spoils

**Title**: to the victor go the spoils

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 460

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, changing the past is easy enough when you are the only left who can tell you what happened

* * *

Devon raises his hand and asks, "But how do we know it's right?"

Mr. Benson smiles at him. "What do you mean?"

Devon swallows and licks his lips, looking around the room. Callie gives him an encouraging nod. "Well, I mean," he says, "the winners write the books, right? So, all of the past... how can we know that's what it was _really _like? It's all guesswork, isn't it, or propaganda?"

Mr. Benson chuckles. "That's what everyone who looks at the past wonders, Mr. Wiles." He turns to the board and writes _To the victor go the spoils _in broad, sweeping letters. "Now, can anyone tell me what this means?"

George says, "What Devon just said. The winners write the history books. Who cares about the losers? They were all enslaved or wiped out, anyway."

Mr. Benson nods. "Exactly. History is whatever the victor wishes it to be." He holds up their textbook, then lets it fall to the desk. "And how would any person know for sure it's wrong?" He shrugs. "It might he harder today to fake something, or rewrite it how you like - but not impossible."

A moment passes, while Devon stares at his book in growing horror, and Mr. Benson says, "But we're not here to investigate the veracity of a millennia's worth of historical texts. We're here to learn what will be on your tests. So turn to section three and read about the Black Plague that wiped out Europe."

Mr. Benson raises an eyebrow at Devon. Devon flips open his book.

.

(In ten years, Devon dies in a carwreck. One of the EMTs sneaks him out of the morgue and he hears about his family's lawsuit against the city for losing his body. Sarah teaches him how to live in this new world – guys with swords after his head, and waking up after death, and living forever if the guys with swords don't get him.

And then Mr. Benson finds them at the place Sarah said was safe, a bar in a city protected by the best of them all, and Mr. Benson says, "I knew I'd see you soon."

Devon gapes at him. Mr. Benson hasn't aged a day. "But – you – I –"

Mr. Benson laughs. "Call me Adam, child, and ask your question again."

Staring at him, Devon tries to remember. History had been fascinating that year, with all of Mr. Be – Adam's snark about what the book said. Quips and asides, and pithy comments that had even the least interested kid sitting up in anticipation of what might come next.

Devon asks, "How can we know the books are right, when the winners write the books?"

Adam smiles. "Live long enough to find out," he says, and buys Devon a beer.)


	65. If we wanted to tell you everything

**Title**: If we wanted to tell you everything, we would leave more footprints in the snow or kiss you harder

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Richard Siken

**Warnings**: AU

**Pairings**: Methos/Richie

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 530

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Richie, "Young Offender" by the Pet Shop Boys

_How graceful your movements  
How bitter your scorn  
I've been a teenager  
since before you were born  
And younger than some  
I've only begun_

* * *

"Hey, kid, how ya been?" He holds out a hand. "I'm Matt Adams."

"Matt Adams," the kid says, shaking his hand. "I'm Ryan Grays."

.

A hundred years. He feels so old, sometimes. Joe's long dead. Mac's been missing almost as long.

He's had to fight for his life three times.

.

"What've you been up to?" Matt asks, slouching next to him at the bar. It's nowhere near as good as Joe's place.

Ryan shrugs. "Nothin' much. Nearly had a student a few years back."

"Really?" Matt nods to the bartender and the guy brings over whatever's on tap. Ryan hadn't noticed; he's trying to get drunk tonight. He'll drink anything.

"Didn't end well," Ryan says, draining another glass.

.

He misses Mac. He misses Tess. He misses Joe. Sometimes, he wishes he'd never woken up that first time.

Other days, he knows he'll go down fighting because the black of death is scarier than eternity looming.

.

"It'll get easier," Matt says, one arm flung over Ryan's shoulder. "Each year, it gets easier."

They're both acting drunk, but Ryan's never felt more sober.

He looks up into Matt's eyes, that guy who once claimed to be Methos when Richie tried laying down the sword over a lifetime ago.

"It does?" he asks, because that sounds like a lie.

Matt smiles, and of course it is.

.

Mac left years before Joe's funeral, just vanished in the night, leaving Richie like the trash Mac had assured him he wasn't anymore. Adam had been gone by then, of course. But then, Richie never had expected him to stick around.

Joe tried finding Mac, but he'd gone to ground. Richie thought about following, but Joe's health was failing. Richie couldn't just leave him.

And when Joe died, Richie had nothing. So he walked out and changed everything and became someone new.

.

"C'mon, kid," Matt says, leading him out of the bar.

Ryan is so tired. He wonders if Matt's going to kill him, and when he asks in a mutter, Matt laughs.

"What good would an infant's head do me?" he chuckles, stopping and looking down into Ryan's eyes.

Shrugging, Ryan says, "Some people take 'em." Mac had warned him. One of the guys he killed had gone after him _because _of how young he was.

Matt smiles. "I am not 'some people,' Ryan."

.

Wherever he went, he looked for Mac. He tried seeking out Mac's friends, but couldn't find any of them, either.

By the time he's a hundred (and nineteen), Ryan just wants to sleep.

.

"Come with me," Matt offers in the morning, stretched out beside Ryan, one hand playing with Ryan's hair. "I know secrets the world has forgotten."

"I want something new," Ryan says, rolling over so that he's straddling Matt. "Can you give me that?"

Matt nods, grinning, and Ryan leans down to kiss him.

.

(Mac walks back into his life as the second century turns. Mac seems to expect Richie Ryan, that street-rat he used to be, always looking for Mac's help.

But that boy died. That boy died, and in his place now stands a warrior trained by Death himself.

Mac is horrified, of course, but Methos smiles.)


	66. rewriting history

**Title:** rewriting history

**Disclaimer:** Methos is not mine

**Warnings:** none

**Rating:** PG

**Pairings:** none

**Wordcount:** 165

**Point of view:** third

**Prompt:** Highlander, author's choice, the oldest of the Immortals.

* * *

"Pierson," Dr. Collins says, stopping in the door of his very tiny office. "Any more information on Methos?"

"I think I might have something," Adam replies, looking up from his notebook. "I'm not sure yet, though, and don't want to raise any false hopes."

Dr. Collins nods and leaves.

Adam smirks and focuses back on leaving the punchline in the middle of the page.

.

After Pierson is revealed as an immortal, he is, of course, fired and assigned his own Watcher.

His replacement goes over all of his notes and on the very last page, finds something scribbled in a language he can't identify, much less translate.

It'll be almost a hundred years before heads or tails is made of that last page.

.

Dr. James Smyth stares at the paper in shock, before laughing so hard he cries.

Well, that answers _that _question, he thinks.

Pierson not only knew he was an immortal... he was also Methos.

Wonderful.

James sighs. He'll have to report this.

Just wonderful.


	67. Tag, you're dead

**Title**: Tag, you're dead

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: Methos rambling

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 310

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, any, the only way to survive The Game even moderately sane is to play it like any other game

* * *

Right after the thought of eternity, the thing most infants didn't really understand was The Game. Anyone who wasn't a psychopath usually never contemplated killing to live - but to be immortal, it was the only way.

(Lie. But it's far too late to take it back.)

The Game is no more than hide-and-seek with a dash of chess. Stalk-and-pounce. Tag, you're dead. Hunting for survival, no more, no less. The greatest teachers could teach their students that. The worst had a high turnover rate.

Methos had no teacher.

(Truth. There is always a first.)

Every immortal is a killer. Not always a murderer – self defense, after all, is not murder. One or the other – I live, you die. You live, I die. Look out for Number 1. In the end, nobody else matters.

In the end, there can be only one.

(Lie. Truth. Does it matter? Either way, that's how it ends.)

Methos explained The Game to Byron as this: _think of it as any other game. There is a winner and a loser, and the winner must be you. To think of it as life and death, as kill or be killed… an eternity of that, isn't an eternity you'd want, unless you were mad. _He paused to look at Byron and they both laughed.

(Oh, Byron, my child. One day, you will be avenged.)

Methos' students always survive their first challenge, whether they issue it or not. If they are very good, there is no final challenge, not until Methos draws his sword against them.

One day, at the end of The Game, all of his children will come home to him.

(The ultimate truth: in the end, the last shall be the first.)

Hide-and-seek with a dash of chess. Stalk-and-pounce. Tag, you're dead. Hunting for survival, no more, no less.

Draw your sword and let's dance.


	68. the man who is indifferent to everything

**Title**: the man who is indifferent to everything

**Disclaimer**: Methos is not mine; title from Johann K. Lavater

**Warnings**: mentions of torture/experimentation; character death

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG13

**Wordcount**: 510

**Point** **of** **view**: third

**Prompt**: Author's choice, any, "I have only one word of advice: run."

* * *

Over the course of thousands of years, it is not unreasonable for even the oldest to be captured and held against his will.

Methos is a survivor. That means he survives. Not unscarred (mentally, physically) and not easily - but he survives. He lives, he grows stronger, he escapes.

Every time, he escapes.

In the modern day, in this delightful child of a nation the United States, even medical experiments are given a small amount of comfort.

He survives every test. He dies, of course, a few times, but he always awakens, strapped to that table, and someone makes a note. They want to make a supersoldier. Oh, children always want to make a supersoldier.

None of them seem to wonder what will happen when their supersoldier turns on them. And if any part of Methos is used – oh, _yes_, the supersoldier will turn on them.

The scientists have yet to learn anything of value. That's why Methos allowed himself to be caught – anyone else would have given it all away. No one else has survived what Methos has. Cassandra thought herself so strong, so tortured, and Methos was even going easy on her. They are the only ones left older than three thousand years.

_Live._

Methos watches the guards. He has been the model prisoner for almost a year. He's wept for them. He's begged. He's promised things he could actually deliver, but of course they don't believe.

He's given food, shelter, clothes. Even a thick blanket. They study him. They hurt him. He bleeds and breaks and heals. He screams and pleads and whimpers.

_Grow stronger_.

They call him Subject 1. He tells them his name is Adam – a small joke. None of them, even the best and brightest, really knows what is allowing them to keep it caged.

But a year to the day, and he's tired. The entire facility has been mapped out in his head for over eleven months. Every guard and scientist has been measured, all found wanting. No one here is worth keeping alive.

So they take him from his cell to the lab and he plays his part, and then he makes his move.

_Fight another day._

When only the head of the project is left alive, cowering on the floor, sobbing as he stares up at his death covered in the blood of his fellows – Methos pauses. "You asked how old I was," Methos says. "You asked if I had any advice for the children carving up my insides."

"Please," Dr. Wilkes gasps. "Please, please, please."

Methos smiles. "I am old, and my advice would've been to run, if I felt like giving it." He laughs, and the good doctor screams, and Methos stands alone.

Methos always stands alone.

The facility burns to the ground, all corpses left inside. All their data has been ferreted out and destroyed.

Methos takes the identity of an Australian on holiday in the States, cuts the trip short, and goes home, where he stands in the Outback for a week, face toward the sun.


	69. the eternal student

**Title**: the eternal student

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: Methos musings

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 150

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos, he's a survivor because he's a student, because he likes learning new things

* * *

Methos has never been static. He's adaptable, ever-changing, and goes with the flow as needed. Yesterday, he was a mercenary; tomorrow, he'll be a history teacher; today he's a bartender looking for work. He's been a prostitute, a priest, a prince. He's been an executioner, a judge, an outlaw and a baker. He loves to learn, so he's a student more than anything. There is so little he doesn't know yet.

When he finds something he doesn't know, he studies until he knows it. He's worn a million names, plied a million trades. He never stops.

That's the key. Putting down roots only means there will be something to burn. But Methos is always looking for what he doesn't know, and he won't stop until he knows everything.

Today he's a bartender, listening to a drunk's rambles. Tomorrow… tomorrow, he'll become a student again, and learn what all geotechnical engineers do.


	70. heir of lightning

**Title**: heir of lightning

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: future!fic; implied primordial!Methos

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG

**Wordcount**: 375

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**:

Author's choice; author's choice;  
_Words scribbled on the underside of an old envelope,  
becoming everything inside.  
Ink spilled on paper, but in a deeper sense,  
several sentences blurred by tears  
represented more sentiment,  
more that was meaningful and real,  
than the years that led to this crossroads._

_I heard the door close -_  
_not slamming, but slinking shut_  
_in an unfortunate and unhappy desire to be undetected,_  
_as if secrecy could lessen the pain._

(The Crüxshadows, "Fortress (Eyes to Heaven)")

* * *

"You tell me you didn't see this coming," he says, slowly unsheathing his sword. He tosses off his coat and doesn't watch where it lands. His eyes stay firmly on the man he used to claim to love.

(Lie.)

"It doesn't have to be like this," Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod pleads, hands still empty. "Methos, it doesn't -"

"Of course it does," Methos interrupts. "You know the rule, the only rule of our kind that matters."

"No!" Duncan shouts. "That doesn't - nobody knows where it came from! Whose law are we following, Methos?"

Methos just smiles and hefts his sword. "We are following the law of survival, my friend."

(Truth.)

"Live," he says. "You have lived for a long time, and lived well. You carry so many inside you; surely you can hear them screaming to come home."

Duncan blanches but he still doesn't draw his sword.

"Grow stronger," Methos continues. "You've done that, Duncan. There is a reason, after all, why so many Watchers thought you'd be the One."

"Methos," Duncan cries, "_please_.

"Fight another day," Methos finishes. "This is the last day, Duncan." He moves, quicker than lightning, and slices Duncan across the face. Duncan lunges back, hands going to his bloody cheek, already healing.

"Fight me, boy," Death commands, "if you want to live."

Duncan fights. He fights well, but it's all by rote - his heart isn't in it. And when he's on his knees, seven hundred years after his first awakening, he holds his head high and tells Death, "It didn't have to be this way, Methos. We all were wrong."

"No," Death replies. "There is only one law of our kind, and the first himself made it."

(Truth.)

"Fare thee well, Duncan. I only ever loved a single soul more than I loved you," Methos says quietly, and then his sword sings.

For one, lovely moment Methos is the only immortal in the world. He carries within him over ten thousand souls, from over five thousand years. He can feel the lightning in his blood.

And then, across the continent, a baby girl begins to howl her rage at being born.

Death laughs. Time to start the greatest game over. And maybe this time he'll lose.

(He doesn't.)


	71. I share creation, Kings can do no more

**Title**: I share creation, Kings can do no more

**Disclaimer**: not my characters

**Warnings**: none

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 185

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt**: Highlander, Methos + Richie, compared to him he's a newborn infant

* * *

Richie is young, and he has young problems. Methos sits at the bar and listens to the brat rant at Joe about the girl who won't take his calls and the movie he wanted to see that isn't at theaters anymore and what a harsh taskmaster Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod is.

Joe listens and then he gives the kid a bit of tough love, and Richie is either soothed or he isn't.

Adam Pierson has young problems, too. He lost his job, and he can't contact that maiden aunt of his and he has to learn to fight (and Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod _is _a harsh taskmaster, but he's nowhere near as harsh as Time). Adam doesn't complain about his problems, though. Adam laughs about Richie's, because Adam is so young he doesn't yet understand.

Methos knows that Richie will never outgrow his young problems. There's almost no way the kid will live past his first decade. Maybe if Methos took him on… but Methos won't. He has no interest in a student this century, so that's just too bad for Richie.


	72. The blossoms we wear in our hats

**Title**: The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years

**Disclaimer**: not my characters; title from Whitman

**Warnings**: AU; mentions of violence and character death

**Pairings**: none

**Rating**: PG  
**Wordcount**: 655

**Point of view**: third

**Prompt:** Highlander, Adam Pierson/Methos + MacLeod, Adam is a young immortal who just couldn't resist nodding when Mac asked if he was Methos

* * *

Adam Pierson is not his name. Of course it's not. He was nameless when Dad found him, and Dad told him to go with whatever name he felt like that day.

Ten years after that, when he was maybe twenty-five, he died in a fortuitous accident. A few months after that, he enrolled at Oxford and then joined the Watchers as a researcher, assigned to Methos.

Oh, but that was a laugh.

.

Adam Pierson is friendly but quiet, affable and determined. He has no enemies and many acquaintances who would call themselves his friends. He's an only child and an orphan.

Every week, he writes a letter addressed to Mattie Pater. He never receives a letter in return, but that doesn't matter.

The week he meets Duncan MacLeod, though, there is no letter sent out.

.

"Methos?" Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod whispers in shock.

Adam Pierson nods his head and offers a beer.

.

Adam Pierson is not much of a fighter, really. And while the boy he used to be learned quite the bag of dirty tricks, it's not enough to survive Kalas. He runs straight to MacLeod, pretending to have forgotten how to fight, since it'd been so long since his last head.

MacLeod is honorable, and Adam Pierson plays him like a fiddle. MacLeod kills Kalas for him, and becomes the closest thing to a friend he has, and soon enough more people know that Adam Pierson is not only an immortal – he's Methos, the _oldest _immortal.

A year after meeting MacLeod, Adam Pierson sends out his next letter to Mattie Pater.

_I may have done something stupid,_ he confesses. _I may or may not have claimed to be you. And… well, I may be in over my head._

He chews on the end of the pen for a moment before sighing.

_I may lose my head_, he writes.

There is no return letter.

.

Another immortal claiming to be Methos shows up, preaching peace and understanding and pacifism. What a crock of shit.

The other false Methos dies, of course. And after Adam Pierson leaves MacLeod and Joe and Richie, all at the bar and regretful, he walks for a long time.

There is no presence to announce him, but Adam knows he's there, and he turns, soaked from the rain, to say, "Hi, Dad."

"Kid," Dad says, releasing his quickening like a quick, warm embrace. Adam sighs, slumping against him. "You did a stupid thing, you know."

"Yeah," he mutters, resting his head on Dad's shoulder. "I know."

.

Methos is much older than anyone believes. He can pass as a human because he suppresses his quickening completely. No immortal can feel a buzz, even if they're standing next to him. Even when he loses his temper, or in the throes of ecstasy – he maintains complete control.

Methos has had only a dozen students in all the millennia he's lived. One of them went by Kronos for a time. Another was Rebecca. He has had no student in modern times, and none of his students ever knew to call him Methos.

Well. Until he found that snotty brat starving on the street.

.

Kronos had been Pestilence, Silas War, Caspian Famine, and Methos Death.

Adam Pierson was not Methos, so he never rode a pale horse.

Kronos follows rumors of Methos to Duncan MacLeod, and when he attempts to strike at the fool daring to use his brother's name, he is executed so neatly and quickly he never even notices his killer.

Methos has no brothers. And even though Kronos had once been his student, Kronos was never his son.

.

Adam Pierson kept up his pretense for almost a decade, channeling his dad whenever he needed to sound _old _and wise. But finally, MacLeod's preaching became too bothersome, and Joe began vocally doubting his story, and he could tell that MacLeod saw Richie whenever he looked Adam's way.

So Adam Pierson arranged a messy accident and died.

.

"Next time someone asks you if you're Methos, what will you say?" Dad inquires with a raised eyebrow.

Bobby Malton pouts at him. "I'll say no," he mutters.

Dad grins. "Good boy."


	73. There was no one near or far

Title: There was no one near or far to keep the world from being mine

Fandom: Highlander/Avengers movieverse

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Sara Teasdale

Warnings: future!fic for Avengers and Highlander

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 690

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, white horses in the night

* * *

"Come, little god," the stranger says, from atop the back of a tall horse.

"Who are you, that I should let you take me?" Loki demands, trying to stifle his gasps. The All-Father had made it truly difficult to escape his cage, but escaped it Loki had. For the moment.

And now he is back on Midgard, the last place anyone would expect him to run.

"I know what hunts you," the stranger says, one hand holding the reins, the other petting the horse's neck. She dances in place, ears flicking between listening to the stranger and out at what might be coming. "And I know how to kill it."

Loki's mouth falls open. "That… what?" he asks, getting his feet under him and staggering up, trying to disguise how hard it is to stay there.

The stranger tilts his head, giving Loki an unimpressed look. "Pride goeth, little god," he quotes from somewhere. It makes no sense to Loki, but he will only be on Midgard until his strength is fully returned, and then he's going to find a hole somewhere else, somewhere far away, and wait until – after.

Another horse steps out of the darkness. "Come, little god," the stranger repeats. "You're a masterful manipulator, I'll grant you that, but you need better allies, and actual friends, before you can get anywhere worth your talent."

"I…" Loki is at a loss. He'd expected that anyone who recognized him would attempt capture or execution. But offering aid? No. Surely a trap.

Loki will _never _be trapped again.

"I thank you for your kindness," he grits out, pain stealing his renowned silver tongue, "but, please, take your leave."

"Yeah, no," the stranger says. "I know you for what you are, and I know what hunts you." His smile seems kind, and his eyes as all-seeing as Heimdallr's, but Loki will not be tricked, Loki will not be caught, he will _survive_ and _endure_, and he will _not_-

"Oh, child," the stranger whispers, dismounting and catching Loki as he collapses.

_I know what you are_, Loki hears, distantly, echoing around him, in him, through him. _You are mine_.

_Who are you? _Loki asks, all the fight gone out of him. In the stranger's embrace, he is warm. Sheltered. Maybe Frigga had held him like this, once, but it is long enough ago to be a faded dream.

The stranger laughs. "Your kind once called me Hel, ages and ages hence. I go by Ben now."

Hel. Goddess of those who died away from battle – goddess of the old and the young, of the cowards or accidents. Hel, a legend even to the aesir. And, apparently, not a goddess at all.

_What will you do with me? _he mutters, sleep coming the easiest it has in decades.

_I need a student_, Ben says, standing, cradling Loki in his arms. Loki feels small, and young, and so much relief it floods him. _You need a teacher, little chaos-maker._

And they are on the horse, though Loki knows not how. The horse, a magnificent creature, pale as Jötunheimr. They are on the mare, Loki with his back to Ben's chest, still bracketed by his arms.

"Rest," Ben murmurs into Loki's ear. "You've lived, Loki. Now you must grow stronger. And when what hunts you arrives… I will show you how to kill."

Loki surrenders to sleep. Either this is a perfectly woven trap – or Loki has been found by someone even more powerful than Odin, someone who (so far, at least) is on his side. And that…

Oh, that is something he so dearly wants.

_You are safe with me,_ Ben promises, as Loki's nightmare changes to nonsense about Thor and a dress and the days when things were good. _I take such good care of that which is mine._

And the little god of trickery and lies, he is such a find.

That which hunts the child seeks Death.

Ben clucks to his horse, and Loki's unused mount follows, and Ben's laugh echoes through the night, because it is Death the child's once-master will find.

He, however, will not be glad of it.


	74. just one part of some big plan

Title: just one part of some big plan

Fandom: Highlander/Avengers movieverse

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: very epic backstory I don't go into – but Methos is primordial. Like, _older than every planet in existence _primordial. Also, future!fic for both fandoms.

Pairings: Methos/Clint, Thor/Jane

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 785

Point of view: third

Prompt: Author's choice, Author's choice, "this dude just showed up to the party with a falcon"

* * *

It's not funny, not really, but Ben can't keep from smirking because he's the only one in the room (maybe even the world) to get the joke.

Tony Stark's parties are always wild. That's just a rule, now. Gravity works, Doom's plans fail, and Stark throws the best parties.

(Gravity doesn't always work, actually, but Ben knows humanity is still too young to learn that lesson. Doom's plans do fail because for all his genius, he's a moron. And Stark? He wants the world to hate him just as much as it loves him, and he succeeds at that every day.)

"Dr. Piers!" Jane Foster says. "I wasn't sure you'd make it." She's grinning, arms wrapped around her boyfriend's gigantic arm, hanging off him. She has no alcohol tolerance at all, clearly. It's quite endearing.

"I've asked you to call me Ben," he laughs, with a quick glance at the boyfriend.

Thor Odinson. Alien god-prince. Wielder of Mjölnir.

That hammer is still one of his greatest triumphs. He can hear its siren call from Thor's bedroom, where he assumes Jane made him leave it. Instead of answering, he raises his hand to his shoulder, stroking the bird there.

Jane doesn't notice; Thor does. He eyes the bird warily. "I've yet to see one so well-trained on Midgard," he says.

Ben smirks, for just a moment, but Thor has eyes only for the bird. "I've had him since he was a fledgling," Ben tells him, and it's not a lie. "Don't worry, Mr. Odinson," Ben assures him, linking his hands behind his back. "He'll only attack if I order him, and this is a party, right? I'm just here for fun. I didn't want to go all the way home just to drop him off."

Thor is still frowning, but Jane shouts, "I see Darcy! C'mon, Thor, I have to tell her about our breakthrough!" To Ben she says, "I didn't think you'd leave the office. I'm so glad you did!" She lets go of Thor to throw her arms around Ben and give him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. Then she drags Thor off to speak with the delightful Ms. Lewis, and Ben watches them go, gaze on the Son of Odin and smile full of teeth.

Oh, poor little prince. He really has no idea.

Ben slouches his way further into the party. A few of his colleagues greet him and chat for a little while, but they don't acknowledge the bird on his shoulder. Ben stays for almost an hour, never getting closer to any of the Avengers than he'd been to Thor.

He leaves without saying goodbye and waits until he's ten blocks from Stark Tower before touching the bird and saying, "Alright, my raptor."

The bird lunges from his shoulder, snapping his wings and landing in a crouch, the Avengers' pet marksman again. He rises with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, asking, "Well?"

Ben laughs and grabs him, pulling him in for a kiss full of teeth and blood, and when he finally lets go, Clint licks his lips, still smirking. "It's not time yet," Ben says, swinging one arm across Clint's shoulders. "Soon, though. You'll know when."

Clint nods, tucking one of his hands into Ben's pocket as they continue walking. "Let me guess," he says. "When the kid comes back, even more broken and pissed off?"

Ben just laughs again. This has been the longest game he's played since – oh, since Heimdallr took over the gate. He doubts Odin even remembers him anymore.

(Mjölnir is singing. Excalibur hums beneath the water. The cube cries for him.

And a mad god is plotting in a cell, every last grief and slight only leading him further into Methos' web.)

"Come, Raptor," Methos whispers into his first creation's ear. "Let's go home. You've gotta get back to work tomorrow."

Raptor presses a brief kiss to the side of his head and settles into his grip, completely pliant as Methos leads the way to his current apartment.

As far as SHIELD and the Avengers know, Hawkeye is on assignment.

As far as SHIELD knows, Dr. Ben Piers is an astrophysicist, just another member of their army of lab coats.

It's not funny, really, the role Raptor has been playing for thirty-five years, ever since two little boys ran away to the circus. (Barney Barton is a ghost. He died on a job gone wrong, was buried in an unmarked grave. Barney Barton was an only child. Two people know that.)

It's not funny, really, that Raptor's called Hawkeye.

Okay, it's pretty funny, and Ben can't help grinning.

(Death isn't above vengeance, you know. And Odin may not remember… but Death does.)


	75. I shall count and bury the dead

Title: I shall count and bury the dead

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Sylvia Plath

Warnings: future!fic

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 325

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, Any, You don't know everything about me.

* * *

Duncan stares at Methos with horrified eyes, swallowing compulsively, mouth opening and closing - but he doesn't say a thing. He gasps for air, seeking _something_, and Methos waits.

Methos always waits.

He is Death. Death is the end of all things.

Duncan had known that - Cassandra saw to it. But Methos helped kill his brothers, and he kept his head down, and he deferred to Duncan, and Duncan had moved beyond it.

Five thousand years. Of course there's a past there. And morals change. The world is no longer flat and suddenly things are crimes that never were before, and Methos learns, yes. Oh how he learns.

And Duncan's hand is on his sword, and tears are on his face, and he splutters out a horrified question, but he does not want an honest answer.

No one ever wants an _honest answer_.

Five thousand years. Longer, even. How can you count years before counting is invented? You can't. You just pick a nice round number, something suitably ancient, and you pretend.

You lie.

Methos lies. Methos lies a lot. He has written history books without a whisper of truth in them, and humanity teaches what he wants taught.

And Duncan swings the sword because Methos has finally done something so evil he must be destroyed, his essence stolen, everything he's done forgotten.

Methos will not be forgotten. Methos will not die.

Duncan has known Adam Pierson, and Adam Pierson as Methos -

Duncan has not yet met Death.

Duncan knows nothing. He is a child, playacting a man, playacting some sort of guardian for the mayfly humans, and he believes he is _right_ and _just_ and _good_.

And maybe he is. Maybe he's the best man in the world, in the entire history of the bloodstained rock –

But Methos will not let Duncan kill him.

And if Duncan wants to die today, then Methos will allow it.

So Death raises his head and draws his sword.


	76. heroes get remembered

Title: heroes get remembered

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: future!fic

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 180

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Mythos, last man standing

* * *

There was never any other outcome, really.

Methos is a legend.

Legends never die.

.

Duncan wasn't even in the top hundred, when The Gathering came. Lightning sang to everyone and they met in the oldest place on Earth, all those who were left after five thousand years of hunting and fighting.

Five thousand? Much longer than that.

And Methos had not always been the oldest, but he was now.

He stood before them all on trembling legs and pretended to be an idiot savant with the blade, who had survived so long through pure happenstance.

And the greatest, most ruthless fighters in the world died in droves, one after the other because Methos did not tire, and he had forever obeyed only one rule: _survive_.

And he stood alone, the oldest living thing in the oldest place on Earth, sword bloody and head high.

.

Because there was only ever one way for The Game to end.

All the quickenings were home, and lightning sang, and the prize is this: true immortality.

Methos is a legend.

Legends never die.


	77. You drive an angel from your door

Title: You drive an angel from your door

Fandom: Avengers/Highlander

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from William Blake

Warnings: post-Avengers; primordial!Methos; mentions of violence/gore

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 820

Point of view: third

Prompt: Avengers/Highlander, Odin + Methos, villains are those who oppose you

Note: _Valföðr_ means _father of the slain_

* * *

"Hullo, Valföðr," the stranger says, slouched in Odin's throne.

Nothing has been disturbed. No alarm has been raised. And yet there is a stranger in Odin's throne, and his fingers are splayed across Gungnir.

"Well met, stranger," Odin says, readying himself for whatever move he makes. "Who are you and how came you to be here?"

The stranger laughs. "You'd think language and culture would move with the times, Valföðr," the stranger sneers. "But you and yours are still stuck a thousand years ago. Explains the boy, at least."

Odin does not react, cannot. If this man is here for Loki... "Who are you?" Odin demands, every inch the king he has been since time immemorial. He is the All-Father, the most powerful warrior and sorcerer in nine realms.

(_Lie_, whispers a voice in the back of his mind. It sounds like Loki.)

"Who I am is of no consequence," the stranger snarls, lunging to his feet, fingers clenched around Gungnir. "What I can do is far more important, _little king _of petty children."

Odin's eyes widen. "How dare you come here!" he thunders, flinging his most powerful, dangerous spell at the man's face.

It hits the man dead-center and he doesn't react at all. "You should know better," the man says, calm and cold. Odin shudders; he remembers this man, remembers blood soaking into the ground, remembers a command that reverberated in his bones.

"You stole a child and raised him to hate himself," the man says, stalking down the stairs towards Odin. "You denied him when he needed you most, lied to him in every memory he has of you, and did not search when he fell into the void." Gungnir flashes, power building, and Odin tries to prepare a shield, but he cannot do anything except listen. "You let your All-Seeing Gatekeeper withhold information, told your firstborn half-truths to stoke his betrayed and despairing rage, and threw the child you stole into a cage without even asking why he'd done anything."

Gungnir rests against Odin's heart and he looks into the stranger's eyes. "So tell me, _little king_," the stranger croons gently, a blood-curdling lullaby, "what should I do with you?"

"I have done my best," Odin says, as strongly as he can.

The stranger laughs. Gungnir pulses and brilliant light flashes, and Odin screams –

He comes to on the floor of his throne room, Thor and his guards asking what has happened, if he's alright.

"Loki," Odin gasps, holding his chest. His heart aches. "Check on Loki, he came for Loki –"

Of course, Loki is gone. So is Gungnir, Sleipnir, and so is Mjölnir, whenever Thor thinks to call it next.

"Father, what happened?" Thor asks, standing in Loki's empty cage.

Odin closes his eye, feeling so very old, and replies, "I made a grave error, Thor. And an enemy."

(_Two enemies, little king_, a voice whispers, as cold and dark as the void. _Well done, Valföðr._)

"Will Loki… is Loki safe?" Thor asks hesitantly. "Is Midgardr?"

Odin flinches. Every accusation the stranger made… if Odin can rectify those that _can_ be rectified… "We must speak to Heimdallr," Odin says. "Come, Thor."

.

When Odin was young, having just ascended his father's throne, he fought a foolish war. It is not in any song, or history, or story told in Asgardr. It exists only in Odin's memory; he is the oldest in Asgardr. No one else still living was there to witness how he fell to his knees before his enemy. How he pled for his life. How he swore anything in his power, if only he survived.

His enemy laughed, and sliced Odin's cheek with the sharpest blade in nine realms. His enemy let him live, with a single command: _raise the child well, little king_.

Odin did not know which child, or why, or when.

By the time he found an infant in a temple on Jotunheimr, he had long since forgotten.

.

"What is your greatest desire?" Adam asks Loki.

"Thanos," Loki answers. "Thanos with his guts spilling on the dirt. His heart in my hand. His eyes, staring unseeing at the stars."

Adam laughs. "He seeks Death, doesn't he?"

Loki nods. "Thanos hopes to woo Death with the charred remnants of a thousand worlds."

When Adam finally controls his laughter, he says, "Then let him meet Death, boyo. I assure you – he won't regret the meeting for long."

Loki smiles at him, madder than a hatter, and Adam wishes he'd acted sooner.

But wishes are horses, and Death does ride, and their first stop is Thanos.

Their last stop will be Asgardr, and Odin will be king of all those slain.

.

There was one command given, on a bloodied field.

There was one command ignored, in golden halls.

The greatest villain is the one created by the hero's hand.

On a thousand worlds, the greatest villain of all is Death.

Death's fine with that.


	78. you'll escape in the final reel

Title: you'll escape in the final reel

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from _Jesus Christ, Superstar_

Warnings: mentions of violence; character death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 165

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, the world was always ending but for a thousand years it happened at his command

* * *

Each human believes their little speck of dust is the whole world, and the sun rises and sets on it, and when their speck of dust is burnt down or they die, the world ends.

The world never ends, not really. But Methos rides out of the sun, his brothers beside him, and little speck of dust after little speck of dust is destroyed.

The survivors always wail and scream like the world has ended. Like they can't remake themselves, since all anyone needs is their life.

Methos never explains that, of course. It's a lesson best learnt alone. Methos learned it well.

Kronos didn't.

For a thousand years, Methos and his brothers ended the world for three continents. Kronos never grew past those years; Methos remade himself every few decades, grew and learned and changed.

Kronos was the End of Time.

Methos was Time's End.

The world ends again, and Methos walks away, leaving Kronos on the ground, mouth still open in his rage.


	79. death's time

Title: death's time

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: character death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 170

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, While a goodbye is said, cities crumble and are forgotten (quote from Einstein's Dreams)

* * *

Joe Dawson dies on a Saturday, while the sun is high in the sky. He's over a hundred years old and tired. He has one daughter, three grandchildren, over two dozen great-grandchildren, and even more descendants than he'd ever imagined.

He dies at peace.

.

Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod dies on a Wednesday, while the moon is bright and the stars twinkling down at him.

There is always a better swordsman.

Duncan's quickening goes to a thousand year old immortal, and that immortal is defeated a week later, so that Duncan's quickening can go to his closest friend, a man so old no one believes in him anymore.

.

Cities grow old and die. Countries are lost. Oceans dry up and continents crumble.

Methos has seen it all.

He leaves civilization and walks into the desert, tired of people for the moment. He'll return in a few centuries to see if he feels better.

.

The world is changed when Methos walks out of the desert.

He fits right in.


	80. legends

Title: legends

Fandom: Highlander/mythology

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: none

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 150

Point of view: third

Prompt: any, any, a brief history of time

* * *

The sun rises in the morning as a tiny little planet spins 'round, and the sun sets as the planet turns away.

Once, there were terrible lizards ruling the world. When they died, furry little things grew into great beasts and took their place at the top.

Eventually, humanity will falter, as all those who have gone before faltered, and something new will rise.

A yellow star burns in the cosmos.

Far in the future, or maybe tomorrow, that star will burn out.

The sun rises. The sun sets. Earth spins 'round.

Methos drinks a beer and never tells the truth about his age because it is unbelievable.

(Dinosaur bones did not inspire the legends of dragons. Rhinos and sheep and antelope aren't the reasons for unicorn sightings. There is something asleep on the floor of Loch Ness, and deep in the ocean, a kraken slumbers.

The sun rises. The sun sets.)


	81. pragmatism

Title: pragmatism

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: discussion of cold-blooded murder

Pairings: implied Methos/Duncan

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 220

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos/Duncan, provoked

* * *

Methos does not have friends. He has students, acquaintances, companions; once, he had brothers. But friends... no. There is no one he trusts, no matter what lies he tells.

Duncan is a good man. Perhaps, one of the best men Methos has ever known.

There is much Methos would do to ensure Duncan's survival. He would kill. He would suffer.

… he would not die. No. There is no one, in any life, that Methos would die for. And if the choice ever comes to Duncan or life…

Well.

Methos watches Duncan, laughs with him, offers sarcastic advice, and plans his death.

Methos does not have friends. At any moment, anyone could turn on him – or he might decide it is more prudent to cut his losses and run rather than leave at his back a single solitary soul who might know his weaknesses.

There is much Methos would do for Duncan. He dearly cares for the boy. He has dearly cared for thousands over the long span of his life.

Many of them, time or war killed. But many…

Methos survives, no matter the cost. That is the secret of his longevity. There is no price too high when it comes to his life. There is no one he cannot or will not kill.

He watches Duncan and plans.


	82. The world shall burn

Title: The world shall burn

Fandom: Avengers movieverse/Highlander

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Milton

Warnings: future!fic for Highlander; post-Avengers; primordial!Methos; very Loki friendly as he's my favorite

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 415

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, "Life _is_pain, [Highness]. Anyone who says differently is selling something." (Westley in The Princess Bride)

* * *

He finds the boy in a cage, bound by iron and magic, bound by masks and years of self-hatred.

There is fire left, yet, though, deep inside. Embers, barely sparking - but fire. The potential to scorch worlds, to raze realms to salt and ashes.

The start of Ragnarök, shackled like a common criminal and left to rot.

So very interesting.

.

He takes the boy, of course.

No one notices for months.

.

Healing is not instantaneous. Physically, the boy is a wreck, skin and bone held together by sheer hatred and innate magic. The boy has so much _potential_. He must have been breathtaking before. With care and time, he can be breathtaking again.

Mentally, the boy is curled inside himself, hiding somewhere deep inside, where the fire pulses. If he is sane, he's clinging to it by his fingernails, through pure determination. But he has not peeked outside to see that his circumstances have changed, but that's fine. Time is plentiful.

Emotionally… well, the boy was fucked up before being shucked into that cage and forgotten. He has been broken for centuries. No problem.

.

The boy blinks and raises his head. He waits to see what the boy will say.

"You are not Asgardian," the boy rasps. He startles when his magic responds to his call, twining around him, prepared to defend and strike.

He lets the boy keep it for peace of mind and comfort. "No, I'm not," he replies. "Do you know who you are?"

The boy nods. "I'm traitor," he answers. "Monster. Evil."

And, oh, but that _burns_. Burns like the heart of a mountain, deep and dark and _hungry_, for worlds, for lives, for the very fabric of being.

"No," he tells the boy. "You are not those things unless you wish to be."

"I…" The boy hesitates, glancing down at his hands, where the magic writhes, then to the sky. There are no walls or ceilings or doors here, unless willed into existence. No cages. "I am free," he whispers, and laughs, throwing his magic up and out, reaching for the horizon.

"Yes." He smiles, laughing as well, and holds out a hand. "I am Pietro," he says. "And you are?"

The boy smiles, wide and enchanting, and he clasps Pietro's hand tightly. "I'm Free," he says.

.

There a thousand worlds to see. Asgard is but a stone in a river, forgotten – except for hate, deep in the fire.

Ragnarök still burns fiercely, but there is time.

There is always time.


	83. by the pale light of the blooded moon

Title: by the pale light of the blooded moon

Fandom: Supernatural/Highlander/Arthurian legend

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: takes place season 2/early season 3 of Supernatural; AUish for Supernatural

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 320

Point of view: third

Prompt: Supernatural, any hunter(s) + any supernatural creature, "Burn me? That's your answer... Burn anything you're afraid of. Burn anything you can't control."

* * *

"Burn me?" he asks gently. "That's your answer? Burn anything you're afraid of... burn anything you can't control?" He laughs, softly at first, but it rises, cold and sharp as a knife. It ends suddenly as his eyes focus on the petty little man with his petty little fears. "What is your name, hunter?"

"Gordon Walker," the man says, fingers tight around his blade.

Blade. Not the best weapon to choose this night, beneath a blooded moon.

He smiles at the man; Walker tries not to flinch. "Why do you hunt me, hunter?"

"You're a monster," Walker says simply, so courageous, so unbending. "Monsters gotta be put down."

He laughs again, colder, sharper. "Better than you have tried, hunter." He looks around the circle of men, armed with silver and blessed weapons, armed with paltry spells and righteousness.

One weapon could kill him, if used by the right person. None of these men are that person, and none of them hold that weapon.

"I survive," he tells them quietly. "I grow stronger. And one day, I shall consume nations. One day, I will reap the world." He spreads his hands. "You cannot touch me, little hunters."

Death is in the circle without a whisper, a frail man in a suit, standing tall beside his son. With a wave of his hand, a flash of his ring, all die in a moment.

Walker alone remains, staring down at his companions. "You die elsewhere," Father informs him with a dismissive gesture. "Leave now."

Walker drops his weapon and flees. Laughter follows him.

.

"Playing with mortals again?" Father asks him.

"I go by Methos now," he says. "I've been back for – oh, a couple hundred years."

Father laughs. "I like the name. I'll release your king soon; the time is almost right."

"Thank you," he says, smiling at the pale mare cantering along the shore. Father claps him on the shoulder and is gone.


	84. and beats high mountain down

Title: and beats high mountain down

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from _The Hobbit_ by Tolkien.

Warnings: implied character death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG  
Wordcount: 75

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos,

_Deathwish without a prayer  
End of hope  
End of love  
End of time  
The rest is silence_

* * *

In the end, there is one.

.

He stands on a blood-soaked field and watches rain fall. He has stood here before; he will stand here again.

Honor does not save anyone. Nor does reason. Love is a shackle and friends anchors.

He is not shackled and has no anchors.

He stands alone at the end, victorious.

.

There was never any other way.

Of the million regrets that litter his path, survival is not one of them.


	85. the day that came before

Title: the day that came before

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: truly horrific things implied

Pairings: none

Rating: PG13

Wordcount: 420

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, if history is written by the winners, the losers aren't always bad guys - just the other guys.

* * *

_And what will you write of us, brother? _Kronos asked once, on a bloody plain, body still healing, while Caspian ate the dead and Silas soothed the surviving horses.

Methos had smiled and stretched up to the sky.

.

Methos is not evil. Honestly, no matter what Cassandra cries about, throwing herself fully into her hatred, into her grief and her rage - she lives still.

No, he is not evil.

He is Death. Maybe that's an allegory or a metaphor or just a name he pulled on once, swinging a sword and becoming terror that stalked every land...

Or, mayhap, once, long ago when gods roamed and magic shuddered in everything, immortals were something _more_.

.

Methos writes. Journals, diaries, chronicles, histories, text books, manuals, letters, codes... in every language he knows, he has written. In every land he has traveled to, he has written. In every era, every age, every form of writing.

Methos is history's oldest survivor. Methos is history's oldest storyteller.

… Methos is history's oldest liar. (And that's the truth.)

.

There was a man, long ago, who saw a rider on a pale horse. He followed a white, red, and black horse. The man fell down in terror as they passed him by.

He wrote of what he saw that day, when he lived and so many others died.

He wrote and it became legend.

.

The longest time ago, Methos opened his eyes. The world had ended and begun anew, the terrible lizards giving away to tiny furred things, and Methos, as always, evolved.

Methos is always evolving.

Death cannot die and that's the greatest trick of all.

.

_And what will you write of us, brother? _Kronos asked after another battle, this time amongst a field of corpses and slaves.

Methos gazed out over their newly-conquered territory, mountains on one side and forest on the other, at the cowering peasants and the chieftain in Caspian's grasp, and he said, _Only the most interesting things._

Kronos had laughed and gone to pick his favorites of the women.

Methos watched a man in the distance, crawling away.

.

Methos writes because he can. He wants to. He's some of the most well-known authors in existence and the ones no one can remember.

History is just words and how they are interpreted. History is written by the victors because nobody cares what the losers have to say. No one remembers the names of the also-rans.

.

There is much Methos does not remember but there is more he does.

He writes none of it.


	86. that heartbeat after the lightning

Title: that heartbeat after the lightning

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: implied violence and death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount:145

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, at the oddest times he remembers who he was and wonders who he'll be

* * *

Every time he picks up the blade, he thinks for just a moment, _Today?_

Every time, he answers, _No._

.

For a thousand years, the answer had been a _yes_ that resounded through continents. Two are left alive who remember. Two are left alive who wait for the _yes_ to return, hungry and willing.

One is left alive who understands.

.

Every time he sees a white horse, he thinks, _Today?_

Every time, he answers, _no_ and the horse trots canters gallops away.

.

For a thousand years, he rode the pale horse and carried the blade.

For a thousand years, he was mighty and undefeated.

For a thousand years, he was feared.

.

Every time he is challenged and wins, in that heartbeat after the lightning, he thinks, _Today?_

One day, the answer will be _Yes_.

He will smile and climb to his feet, and he will again be Death.


	87. the breathless beat of angels' wings

Title: I've heard the breathless beat of angels' wings when the bullets fly and the sabers swing

Fandom: Supernatural/Highlander/mythology

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from John Popper

Warnings: spoilers for SN season 5

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 305

Point of view: third

Prompt: any, any/any,

_So many things that I wanted to say  
Forever left untold  
I still remember the tears that you shed  
Over someone else_  
(HAMMERFALL, "The Fallen One")

* * *

They meet up every few hundred years, beside a stream or in a tavern or walking down a road that doesn't exist. They chat, catching up and sharing jokes and arguing for the sake of it. A few hours every few hundred years, and it's enough.

For a very long time, it's enough.

.

They've told each other a thousand names, none of them truer than the rest. Every name is who they are, who they've been, who they'll one day be.

This day, his name is Eshu and his companion is Adao; it's storming and they're standing on a beach.

This day, Adao is furious and spends the first hour of their meeting shouting into the wind, cursing and screaming, and Eshu waits.

"My brothers are dead," Adao finally says, voice hoarse and fists clenched. "There was no other way and now they are gone." He closes his eyes, shuddering, wrapping his arms around himself. "And I can't even avenge them," he murmurs, words almost stolen by the storm. "I'd have to destroy myself, and even for my brothers, even for those children…"

He turns to face Eshu, desperately demanding, "You understand, don't you, that I won't destroy myself for anyone?"

"Of course I do," Eshu assures him, not reaching out to hold him because Adao would not accept it right now.

Adao turns back into the storm; Eshu stays at his side until the storm blows out.

They go their separate ways until the next meeting.

.

(Lucifer kills Gabriel without hesitating.

Death's son pulls Gabriel back from his father's grip, and Father lets the angel go with a smirk because he's always had a soft spot for tricksters.)

.

In a few hundred years, Heyókȟa thanks Maitias. Maitias simply shrugs and smiles, saying, "Knock knock."

Heyókȟa laughs, long and loud, before asking, "Who's there?"


	88. the patient calculations of the sea

Title: the patient calculations of the sea

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Jane Yolen

Warnings: future!fic; mentions of murder

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 205

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, I got too big, too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows.

* * *

It's easy to kill Adam Pierson, like it was easy to kill everyone before him. The Watchers believe he's an infant, and infants do poorly in challenges. And if Duncan believes Adam Pierson dies, the Watchers will, as well.

Adam dies like a child, helpless and angry, and his killer dies two hours later, fleeing Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, in a three car pile-up that decapitates him. No one gets his quickening.

Neither Joe nor Duncan mentions that Adam Pierson had been Methos, and that now all his knowledge is lost. But the mourn him, and they miss him, and Duncan is a little more bloodthirsty than he had been before.

...

On a tiny island out in the Pacific, Joey Bennison steps off a plane, ready to begin his vacation from school. He's studying to become an astrophysicist and his mind needs a break. He's got more money than he'll ever know what to do with, thanks to his guilt-ridden father and a car accident that killed his mother, and he's real bad in social situations, never knowing what to say or do.

But he knows how to wander, and he knows how to wait, and he knows what the moai are saying.


	89. where we have immortal stay

Title: Where we have immortal stay

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Donne

Warnings: AU; character death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 450

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, he was using the Watchers to hunt

* * *

The Watchers were created to be a hunting ground. Of course, they do not know that. Every few hundred years, Methos (Benjamin, Adam, Pierce's son, Matthew, Bartholomew) slips in and culls those who are weak and those who are strong. Every few hundred years, a dozen or so immortals go missing. The world is a big place, though.

The world is a big place, and there are always other immortals to Watch and record and remember.

.

Adam Pierson exists to watch Duncan MacLeod. He's become noticeable. He's become too big for the small world immortals occupy.

Then Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, a strong contender for the Prize (a lie that's grown and grown and grown, and won't the winner be surprised when nothing at all happens [well, no, because, of course, the winner will the one who invented the story]) , walks into Adam Pierson's apartment and recognizes Methos for what he is.

Well. This could be fun.

.

Kronos stabs him in the shoulder and Methos says patiently, "Brother, what are you doing?"

A very long time ago, Kronos had been a mistake. But he'd been Methos' pet for so long that Methos had mercy and left him alive when he tired of the child. But now, Kronos has become a threat, and those Methos does not abide.

When Methos strikes, it is a move he never teaches his students, and Kronos dies with wide eyes. As he breathes in Kronos' quickening, Methos sighs in pleasure.

He does so love a good quickening.

.

Kronos is the oldest quickening Methos has ever taken, so he decides to go after Silas and Caspian. Caspian is a scrapper, like he's always been, but Silas is gentle like a lamb. He's always been devoted to Methos, and Methos has no trouble preying on that weakness.

With Silas' death, there is no one left who comes within a thousand years of Methos' age.

.

Adam Pierson is very young, and the Watchers cast him out because immortals are Watched instead of Watchers.

No matter. Give it a few hundred years; human memory is short.

.

Adam Pierson dies in his third challenge. The immortal who takes his head dies later that evening when a terrible traffic accident beheads him on the freeway.

Duncan MacLeod mourns his student and his friend; the Watchers record it avidly.

.

In fifty years, a ghost steps out of the past and strikes before Duncan can even say his name.

Methos is a hunter; Duncan has become too loud.

Duncan vanishes, no matter how fervently the Watchers search.

Methos watches the children scurry about and flips a coin to see if the time has come to burn them down.


	90. it contains the same dark bloody history

Title: it contains the same dark bloody history

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Gerald Stern

Warnings: lots and lots of talk of death (and Death)

Pairings: none

Rating: PG  
Wordcount:

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any immortal character,  
_  
I've got nothing left to live for  
Got no reason yet to die  
But when I'm standing at the gallows  
I'll be staring at the sky  
Because no matter where they take me  
Death I will survive_

* * *

If Methos were to sit down at a table somewhere, pull an unused notepad close, and write down every time he has been executed, he would run out of paper.

He could list all the reasons, too, and he remembers most of them fondly. He has always enjoyed inciting a riot.

In his long life (longer than any guess), Methos has been killed in all the ways there are to die except the final. He was to be drawn-and-quartered once, but he has a way with horses and so began a new legend of the invincible man.

(Truth: if there is a legend of an invincible man, it is probably Methos in one of his guises.)

He smiles down at the notepad, putting a star next to _trampled by horses_. That had been an accidental execution, and one he wouldn't mind enduring again. Horses are such lovely creatures.

Every time he was sentenced to beheading – and there were numerous occasions, especially when his tongue got the better of him and told his masters of the time exactly what he thought – Methos magicked up an escape. (Not always with magic, but it was close enough for the belief to build.)

He has been a revolutionary and a criminal and a man far ahead of his time. He has had said unliked and unwanted truths, and he has lied until empires crumbled away. He led emperors to their deaths and sent thousands of peasants on the road to starvation, and one day he'll do it all again.

But for now, he caps the pen and sets it aside. Joe is at the bar chatting with a pretty customer and MacLeod is on the way with the brat in tow. And Methos drains his beer, looking down at the last item on his list - _in pursuit of the prize_.

There is no Prize. There is no Game. Quickenings are magic, and there are few left who speak that language fluently.

Oh, yes. The game the children play would see Methos dead, but he is no inclination to die.

"Hey, Mac! Richie, get over here," Joe calls from the bar.

Methos flicks a glance at the notepad and it disappears. He grabs his beer, refilling it with a thought only to drain it again.

No, he is not ready to die. He has lived too long a life.

(Truth: beheading will not work any better than all the rest.)

(Lie: that he'll ever let anyone try.)


	91. and it keeps raining on

Title: endless (and the rain keeps on)

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: talk of the apocalypse and civil war

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 285

Point of view: third

Prompt: any, any,

_Oh simple thing, where have you gone?  
I'm getting old and I need someone to rely on _

* * *

In a thousand years, after the end has come and gone, still, he will be there standing.

A thousand years ago, after the end had come and gone, still, he was there standing.

That is eternity, child, and you still don't know what it means.

.

In the sludge and the rain, alone, he knelt and breathed. He breathed and breathed and breathed, the freshest air the world ever knew, and it was good, and it was enough.

In the sludge and the rain, before anything else had a mind to think, he stood and stared at what no one had ever seen.

In the sludge and the rain, he learned to walk and he learned to run.

In the sludge and the rain, he was alive.

.

Things are ended, now. Things are ended again. His friends have turned their backs and blood runs in the streets, as civil war divides the world.

_Again_, he thinks. Because civil war always divides the world eventually.

.

It is lonesome thing, having no one to rely on. No one to trust. Never has he trusted anyone, and his caution has always proven to be necessary, because everyone wants him for his knowledge, for his skill - not for him, the man who once knelt in sludge and rain, knowing what it was to be alive.

It is a lonesome thing, his existence, but still - alive is better than not, and there is no one with the skill to end him.

He stands in the middle of the apocalypse, as he had stood in the middle of the others, and he knows there will be more.

He turns his face up to the sky and feels the rain.


	92. out of the sun

Title: out of the sun

Fandom: Highlander

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: pre-apocalyptic; AU

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 280

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, Like most things it started in a bar

* * *

Like most things, it started in a bar. Kronos had been dead for a year, along with their brothers. MacLeod continued preaching, Joe kept watching and recording, and the world continued to turn.

Small annoyances crept in, Methos dealt with them, and nothing ever changed.

Nothing would ever change again.

Methos was sitting in a bar, drinking swill, listening to a band wail, and Joe was chatting while he poured drinks, and MacLeod was lecturing the boy about something, and Methos realized that the world was long overdue for the cleansing fire.

Had that been what Kronos wanted? At the time, it had seemed mad - but that was because it was IKronos'/I plan, and the four of them knew that Methos needed to plan things. But he had only taken Kronos' blueprints and refined them.

He should have scrapped the whole thing and built something new.

But no, he thinks, fingers tightening on the bottle. He'd still been blinded by MacLeod.

His brothers are dead. He sets down the bottle and tilts his head, covertly studying the righteous child who dared defy the ancients.

_Why_, he thinks, _did I turn on my brothers for this child?_ He cannot remember.

How long has it been since fire cleansed the world? So much is corrupt and stagnant.

_Oh, my brothers, forgive me_, he pleads, standing and striding to the door. _In your honor, I will ride again_. He pauses, glancing back at Joe, at MacLeod and his boy, at the mortals who had no idea of the god in their midst. _For you, Kronos, out of the sun once more_.

.

It starts in a bar.

It does not end there.


	93. the Master whispers down eternity

Title: the Master whispers down eternity

Fandom: Highlander/Avengers movieverse

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Earl Marlatt

Warnings: AU after Thor; mentions of post-apocalyptic rebuilding

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 1235

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, the baby is a foundling and doesn't seem quite human...

* * *

He finds the child on his daily walk through the nearest tract of Amazonia. The child is as pale as he is, which means he must not be a native of the jungle, and Ben stares down at him indecisively for a moment. This has been a quiet life, since leaving MacLeod in his dreary Pacific northwest town, and does he want to deal with the drama of finding a white child in the wilds of the Amazon?

The child babbles something at him, eyes as green as the jewels Ben wore lifetimes ago, and Ben stoops to gently pick him up.

Life was getting boring anyway, and no one within a thousand kilometers questions anything he does. He is either a ghost or a god, and either way, he is left alone.

.

Ben names the child _Adam_ because it amuses him. Adam grows slowly, far slower than any other child Ben has ever raised, which only confirms what he's suspected since he found the boy.

The first time Adam changes his shape, it's into an anaconda, and he doesn't turn back for three days. Ben treats him exactly the same and Adam laughs once he's a boy again. The second time, he becomes a toucan; the third, an ocelot. Ben never reacts except to congratulate him.

Adam calms down when he realizes that no matter his shape, he is Ben's son.

.

Adam is 23 and looks around 10, and he asks Ben, "You don't age right, either?" because Ben looks exactly the same as when he found the boy in the jungle.

"I will never age," Ben tells him. "And I don't know how old you'll be when you stop."

.

Mentally, Adam is far older than his body. Ben gives him a millennia-old library and the entire internet, and sometimes, can barely stay ahead of the boy. They spend weeks at a time lost in the jungle, stalked by predators few humans have ever seen in person, and Adam builds up his shapes.

Adam is 45 and looks barely 18 when he asks, "What am I?"

Ben isn't entirely honest when he says, "I don't know," and when Adam opens his mouth to demand another answer, Ben adds, "But you are my son."

A jaguar screeches to the east, so they continue walking, spending the rest of the day in silence.

.

When Adam is 50, he asks to travel, so Ben packs everything up and they head northeast. Ben bypasses North America entirely for Europe, where they continue east all the way to the Pacific. They spend a decade wandering, and look like brothers instead of father and son.

Adam stops aging around the mortal age of 25; when Ben asks, Adam shrugs and says it's what he decided.

.

"How old are you?" Adam asks when he is 100 and aliens from outer space have plunged Ben's world into warfare.

They are back at the Amazon (_home_, Ben thinks, like the Fertile Crescent once was, like the plains of windy Troy, like the great isle that sank beneath the waves so long ago), watching humanity struggle. Their jungle is protected, and all the mortals who flee there, though not many do.

"Very," Ben replies, strengthening his protection spell. Adam's eyes flash that brilliant green as he adds his own power to it.

.

Thanos, like all would-be conquerors, is defeated. But Ben's world must rebuild or the next would-be conqueror might get lucky.

"What do you think?" Ben glances at Adam, who has a sloth in his arms and one of the native children at his side. The entire jungle holds its breath, the old magicks waiting for Ben's word, the very ground trembling.

"This is our world, is it not?" Adam asks rhetorically. "You, the ancient; I, the foundling. This world is our home."

"Yes," Ben murmurs.

Adam adds, "We protect what is ours." He smiles at Ben, handing the sloth to the child. "You taught me that, Da."

.

When he steps out of the jungle, Ben ties the sigil to his own quickening. So long as he has his head, the Amazon will still be safe. Adam is a boa twined around his upper body and Ben quickly transports them to the heart of the rebuilding effort, in the ever-resilient city of New York.

The aesir have offered their aid, and Ben remembers well the last time he met one of their kind, in Oslo, during Hardrada's rule. Their leader now is tall, blond, and blue-eyed, and he carries a hammer Ben knows well.

Captain America, still as youthful as ever, and the Hulk represent humanity, and SHIELD, though weakened, commands what forces are left to Earth.

Ben appears in the midst of a quarrel, Adam looped around his shoulders, and waits to be noticed.

He is not impressed when it takes an hour.

.

When Thor Odinson, Captain America, and Smith, current director of SHIELD, ask for his name, he says, "Lífthrasir Nanashi."

Thor booms, "Well met!"

Lífthrasir smiles at him and knows that Odin Borrson would've questioned him further, especially with that name – but, then, Odin knows prophecy and once met a sailor who blinded the son of the sea.

But Thor's attention is elsewhere, and Lífthrasir is too useful to turn away, and when Adam shifts back, his eyes flash as he hisses, "_Thor_," low and cold and vicious. He turns quickly to face Lífthrasir and shifts into his female shape, and tells Lífthrasir, "My name is Pan."

Lífthrasir nods. "C'mon," he says. "Our assignment is this way." Pan follows with a single glance thrown over her shoulder at Thor and avoids the godling for the rest of their time in New York.

.

MacLeod is helping to rebuild the Pacific coast. Most of the immortals in the western hemisphere have flocked to his banner, because what is the point of winning the prize in a ghost world?

Lífthrasir leaves him to it, traveling with Pan to Rome, at the behest of SHIELD.

.

Pan is 120 and looks barely 25, dark hair piled on her head and skin tanned by the sun, eyes poison-bright, when Thor stares at her for almost an hour before stuttering out, "Lo-Loki?"

Lífthrasir stands beside her, everything in him waiting for her play, and Pan straightens to her full height (still a head and a half shorter than Odin's son), and she says, "Loki died when he fell from a bridge."

"Please," Thor says, "Loki, I do not understand – we have thought you dead for –"

Pan interrupts, voice strong, to say, "Loki, child of no one, _is _dead, son of Odin." She smiles, suddenly, brilliantly, adding, "I am Pan, I am Adam, and I am the child of legend."

Lífthrasir laughs, loud and long, and pulls Pan close for a hug. "You are, as ever, delightful," he murmurs into her hair. When he catches Thor's bewildered expression, he laughs again.

.

"You remember now?" Lífthrasir asks while Odin strides toward them, his retinue falling further and further behind.

"I remembered when Thor set foot on this world again," Pan answers.

"What do you want, child?" Lífthrasir glances down at her; she is still so young, still that boy he found in the wilderness.

"You are the ancient," Pan says, "and I am the foundling. And this world is ours."

"Exactly so," Lífthrasir murmurs, stepping forward to meet the All-Father, his child beside him.


	94. those who wander

Title: those who wander

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Tolkien

Warnings: future!fic. ish. AUish? Look, it's really frickin' weird, okay?

Pairings: none

Rating: PG  
Wordcount: 550

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, Renewed shall be the blade that was broken / the crownless again shall be king

* * *

_once, a very long time ago, when the sky was young and the ground stretched out forever below it, there was a throne. all things living bowed to it and the one who sat thereon._

_once._

_but it was a very long time ago._

_._

Since the invention of the sword, Methos has never used another's. He forges his own, tempered to his will and his might, and nobody else can wield it - just as once, long ago, nobody else could ride the horse that raced beneath him.

For a few centuries, Methos made a fortune as a bladesmith. He's also been world-renowned as a horse trainer. His swords were the strongest, his horses the surest, and everyone who was anyone wanted the ones from his own hands.

.

_legend tells of the children of gods, who walked the earth and shook the mountains._

_legend tells of a king so beloved the sky itself wept when he died, the ground trembled when they laid him down._

_legend tells of a woman who created a crown of stardust and sunlight and allowed a man to sit on the throne of the ancients._

_legend tells of how the woman smiled, as the man kissed her hand and swore to follow her will in all things. _

_legend tells… _

_well, that's the trick, isn't it. legend tells so many things._

.

Methos' sword sings, when he listens closely enough. Horses shout his name, when he listens closely enough.

There is a mountain, so worn down now that none could imagine how high it once soared, that calls for him, endlessly. Whenever he tires of the children and their small problems, their young plights, he travels to a fissure in the earth and lets himself fall.

.

_oh, how she laughs to see what has become of the world. _

_he smiles at her joy and holds out the sword while a mare dances behind him, and she places the crown of stardust and sunlight on her own head._

_i have held it in waiting, he says. are you ready to return?_

_mountains shake open and the throne again glitters in the dawn._

_follow me, child, she says as horses gallop into the light. we ride again._

.

Methos wields swords like they're a part of his arm, and he rides horses like he was born for it.

They are and he was.

.

_once, long ago, a realm was given into the keeping of guardians. the guardians foundered and the realm fell to decay and despair. _

_all but one forgot, and how could one do what needed to be done? _

_legend tells that the mother will return and reward the one for how he tried._

_there can be only one, and he rides a pale horse, following closely behind she who sat on the throne, and soon, the realm shall be healed, at last, again, for always and forever._

_her will be done._

_._

"C'mon, tell me," Joe cajoles, handing Adam a cold beer. "What's the first thing you remember?"

Adam smiles at him, the wide, brilliant smile of a little boy with a secret. "What every man remembers," he says. "There was a woman, and she was… oh, Joe, she was something else."

Joe laughs, "Of course there was," and goes to serve another customer.


	95. give us a kiss

Title: give us a kiss

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: AUish, maybe? Let's say Methos never put Kronos in the well

Pairings: Kronos/Methos

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 145

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos/Kronos, flirting

* * *

"Come now, brother, tell me," Kronos says, sliding around the chair and standing in between Methos' knees. "You must have a thousand ideas."

Methos glances up at him through his eyelashes, tilting his head to the side. "And what of it?" he asks. "You know that tonight is my night to do as I like, without question. And tonight I like to read."

Kronos reaches down to brush Methos' lips with the tip of his finger. "Then I'll find my own game, and I'll slaughter it however I like. And tomorrow, tomorrow you'll read about in the paper, and you'll know that you could have been with me."

He turns on his heel and stalks out. Methos watches him go, shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and looks back down at his book.

When he finishes the chapter, he stands and follows his brother.


	96. There's trees in the desert

Title: There's trees in the desert since you moved out

Disclaimer: the ones you don't recognize are mine; lyrics from Zager and Evans; title from BtVS

Warnings: cannibalism, violence, aftermath of multiple plagues; very pre- and then a little post-series

Pairings: none

Rating: Rish?

Wordcount: 1190

Point of view: third

Note: I chose the names for a reason, but I shan't tell unless asked. *shrugs*

Prompt: author's choice, author's choice,

"What do they do with the old where you come from?"

"We put them on thrones and call them gods."

* * *

"What do your people do with the old where you come from?" the boy asks, barely a man. His sister, not yet a woman, watches from the shadows, fingers tight around the blade; blood drips down her arm to mingle with the dirt. In the distance, smoke billows up to block out the sun.

He smiles at them, these little survivors, and he says, "We put them on thrones and call them gods."

...

There is no new plague, merely variations of the same old one. (_Pestilence_, he thinks, _brother, how I've missed you. Mayhap we'll ride again soon_.) Plague attacks the very old and the very young before turning on everyone else.

The brother and sister who follow him from the corpse-ridden village were executed as demons when the plague had barely begun to eat the villagers, a sacrifice to appease the gods. Now, they alone are left, orphans a dozen times over.

They do not speak their names; neither does he.

...

When they are attacked by bandits, the girl guts five men, the boy three, and he slaughters the rest. "Feast," he tells them. "We can use the horses."

The boy hesitates, disgust on his face, but the girl hacks off meat from one of the bandit's arms. "Eat," she orders, offering it to her brother.

The boy can barely force down half a helping; the girl eats until she can barely move.

He flicks his gaze from one to the other and plans.

...

"Nidaba," he says, while the boy fetches water, a season after he found them, "which do you love more: your life or your brother?"

She lunges to her feet, fingers on her blade, and hisses, "How do you know my name?"

"A name for a name," he says. "I am Marduk." He pauses, watching her watch him, and then says, "Think on it." He settles back down to start a fire for warmth while the boy comes back up the path with three skins of water.

...

Another season passes. The children do not grow, though Marduk teaches them to fight as he learned: to lose is to die. They awaken every time. "We are gods," he says, smiling, and Nidaba nods while the boy shakes his head.

"We are cursed," he argues, and Marduk laughs.

"So are gods," he says, watching the girl watch him. Her gaze flicks to her brother and then away.

...

They follow the plague, plundering dead villages for supplies; the plague does not touch them. Cannot. The boy does not believe, but Nidaba laughs at the pretty jewels hidden beneath an infested blanket, at the kittens that tumble behind her, and she says, "I am a god triumphant," leaning down to wrap her arms around a bitch plump with puppies.

Only gods and the sacred animals survive pestilence. The boy glances around warily, fearful of the gods striking them where they stand for blasphemy, for sacrilege – but the girl sacrifices the healthiest bull in her own name and orders them both to feast.

The boy falls onto the meat as if he were starving (he is, for he is such a picky little thing) and Nidaba watches him. Marduk waits until they both are sated before taking the rest.

...

Marduk stops at the ocean, where they have followed the sun. "Do you know how to kill a god?" he asks.

Nidaba and her brother shake their heads. "Would you like to learn?" he asks, glancing at Nidaba before flicking his gaze at her brother and then back to the ocean.

"You are a fool," the boy accuses. "Gods do not die!"

"No," Nidaba answers, both of them ignoring the boy. "Not yet."

Smiling, Marduk leans down to scoop up some water and rubs it into the back of his neck.

Nidaba does not look at her brother.

…

While the boy hunts, Nidaba kneels in front of Marduk and murmurs, "Please, old one, teach me to kill a god."

Marduk raises her chin with a gentle hand and promises, "I shall."

...

Ten seasons have passed when Nidaba takes her blade to her brother's neck. There are no tears on her face when she makes the final cut and his head rolls to Marduk's feet. Lightning springs from his body to hers, and still she does not weep.

"Eat," Marduk tells her, "for you are a god."

She raises her head, prepares the meat, and feasts.

...

"How long," Nidaba asks, pouring the dirt over her brother's bones, "until you sacrifice me in your name?"

Marduk laughs. "I do not sacrifice in my name, child." He lifts his face to the sun, listens to the howling wind, and turns to her. "But we go our separate ways now."

He doesn't look back.

...

It is the turn of the century in Vienna, and there is a god sitting on a park bench.

"Hullo, Marduk ," a young woman who will never grow older says, settling beside him.

"Nidaba," he replies, inclining his head.

"With Darius and Rebecca gone," she says, "we are the oldest."

"Yes," he says, smiling.

There is a woman stalking him, and a Boy Scout tracking the woman, and a watcher (or two, or three) watching it all, but here, now, there are two gods sitting in a park, and the sun is shining, and they speak in a language never written down.

...

"You are a monster!" Cassandra screams, swinging her sword. The Boy Scout is shouting, the watchers watching avidly (save one, who is arguing with himself about interfering), and he waits for the opportune moment.

One block, one swing, one head flying.

"Of course," he says into the resounding silence. "All gods are monsters."

"Methos!" MacLeod shouts, tears in his eyes, gaze going from the body to the man he thought his friend.

Cassandra 's quickening goes to MacLeod because even in death she hates the god who owned her for half a millennia.

MacLeod raises his sword. Joe lunges for him, holds him back, and the god's gaze goes to the watchers cowering in the shadows. "Methos is a legend," he says, tired of hiding. "My first name in your history books is Marduk, and I was old then." He smiles at them and doesn't look back at MacLeod or Joe as he walks away.

...

"My brothers are dead," the oldest man tells the oldest woman in the world.

"Must all four be present to ride?" she asks. "Once, we stalked the world, from ocean to ocean."

He laughs. "So be it."

...

There are two gods in an Aston Martin, traveling to Beijing from Rome. His name is Aminon; hers is Anann.

Hell does not follow them, but a plague builds on the rising winds, and there is already too little food for the people scuttling about on the planet that grows smaller all the time.

Aminon laughs as Anann turns the music up louder and they both sing along.

_Now it's been ten thousand years, man has cried a billion tears  
For what, he never knew, now man's reign is through  
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight  
So very far away, maybe it's only yesterday_


	97. she'll dye her dress, she'll dye it red

Title: she'll dye her dress, she'll dye it red

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from a folk song

Warnings: AU; mentions of death/destruction

Pairings: Methos/Kronos

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 710

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, always female Methos, the oldest Immortal

* * *

She never tells the truth of her age. She is researching the legendary Methos and the Highlander lets himself into her flat, and she simply laughs when he asks, "Methos?"

"Of course not," she lies. "I'm Eve Pierson."

Methos the legend must always be male.

.

She lets Duncan convince her that she is pre-immortal, and raves at him afterwards, stripping paint from the walls with her stringency. Of course her job is lost the moment Kalas comes for her, but Duncan sees only a helpless damsel and swoops in, takes her back to Seacouver under the shelter of his protection.

Joe sometimes watches her (hah, _Watches_) but she mastered the art of bullshitting back when there were merely a handful of languages in the world.

.

Evelyn Pierson is the (adopted) daughter of John and Marietta Pierson. She attended Oxford on scholarship. There are people in her hometown who will swear until the cows come home that she was the sweetest girl they ever met. Her teachers adored her. Even with the Watchers, she was beloved.

"Maybe," she tells Duncan after she calms, "I'll be able to meet Methos!"

Duncan laughs and pats her shoulder. "Maybe you will, at that."

.

Kronos, Silas, Methos, Caspian. Pestilence, War, Death, Famine – two men and two women, the end of the world.

Oh, Kronos had loved her. And she had loved him. In blood and in terror, in dust and in peace. She had found him as a boy, had sensed the lightning in him, had taken him with her when she left the village on fire. Silas came later, with his cattle and his horses. And Caspian they found at the edge of the sea, washing the blood of two continents off her skin.

What finally drove Methos away from her brothers and sister was Kronos' jealousy. He could never stand her with another – and she could not stand being owned like one of their slaves, not by that boy who lived only by her mercy.

Kronos, Silas, and Caspian would always blame the woman Cassandra for the end of their reign. But it was Methos finally growing tired of Kronos and wanting her own life.

.

When the fake Methos comes to town and preaches his philosophy of peace, Eve Pierson visits him with Richie, just two students of the Highlander. Richie falls for it, hook, line, and sinker. Eve laughs.

When Cassandra tries to attack Eve Pierson, tries to claim that she is Methos, Duncan believes it means her age has finally caught up with her.

When Kronos kills her in the parking lot, she wakes with a sigh and lets him hold her. It's been three thousand years since she was Methos.

"You haven't changed at all, brother," she whispers into his neck, twining her hands in his too-short hair. She lets him rant, lets him rave, listens to his madness as she always has –

She remembers when there was no civilization at all, just pockets of people here and there, family units trying to survive amidst the beasts. She remembers dying and waking and dying again and again and again. She remembers the Mother Goddess, and when religion became everything, when the Nazarene spread to every corner of the world.

"Kronos," she says now, when he finally falls silent. "Your plan will not work."

No, he hasn't changed at all, not in four thousand years. And while Eve Pierson is a darling, she does not enjoy being babied, patted on the head, and sent into the kitchen.

Kronos remembers the woman who found him, kept him, and taught him to kill.

"Then tell me what will, Methos," he begs, falling to his knees beside her, clutching her hand. "I have missed you."

She stares down at him. "Do you remember when we tore down kingdoms?" she asks. His smile spreads across his face and she adds, "The kingdoms are bigger, but they'll fall just as easily."

.

Richie and Duncan tear apart Seacouver looking for her, but Joe flips through the Methos files, dreading what might come next.

"I told you!" Cassandra screams while Europe is ravaged by a plague. "I told you!"

.

Methos rides out of the sun with her brothers and sister, and feels freer than she has in three thousand years.


	98. the longest game

Title: the longest game

Disclaimer: not my characters; one line from Tolkien

Warnings: Methos being old

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 115

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, the long game

* * *

There are many things Kronos, Silas, and Caspian never understood, and that was their downfall. They didn't realize the power of hiding, of lying, of pretending. At least, they didn't understand the _long_ game. For a short time, yes, for a few decades. But not for millennia.

Kronos had the right idea, but he moved too soon. His apocalypse was clever, but too obvious. He'd only been planning it for a couple of decades, after all, and even then, he needed Methos to make it work.

Methos slays kings, ruins towns, beats high mountains down. As he likes. He plays the longest game, and it will not end (this time) for centuries yet.


	99. the slow waking of sleeping giants

Title: the slow waking of sleeping giants

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: future!fic; mentions of destruction

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 180

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, a friendship so strong that when one is seriously hurt/in danger, the other completely loses it

* * *

They take Joe. Adam Pierson closes his eyes, breathes slowly and deeply, burying anything but an academic, new-to-everything reaction, and turns to Duncan. "What happened?" he demands, panic in his voice.

Joe's bar is burning. Joe himself is missing.

They're being watched and Duncan, bless his heart, actually catches on in time to not give Adam away.

"We have to get out of here," Duncan says - because he has a student to protect. A child barely half a decade into The Game.

So their enemies think, whoever took Joe.

As Duncan drives away, Adam looks back. The sight sears into Methos' memory and a deathknell plays. The sacking of Troy, Alexandria's library, the fire of London...

"What do we do?" Duncan asks, now that the eyes are off of them.

"We find Joe," Methos says. His hand itches for a sword, his thighs for a horse to cling to, his soul for his brothers beside him, riding across the plains, out of the sun and into their enemies.

"We find Joe," he repeats, "and you leave the rest to me."


	100. the reclining dragon

Title: the reclining dragon

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: outside pov; future!fic

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 390

Point of view: third

Prompt: author's choice, any, garyuu or garyou (Japanese) - unrecognized genius; an exceptional person hidden among the masses (literally "a reclining dragon")

* * *

"Professor," the boy on the front row asks, "how do you know it's _true_?"

David sighs. This kid - Adamson? Addison? Something that starts with an A - has to question _everything_. "Whether it's true or not," he says, for the fifth, fifteenth, fiftieth time, "it's what the book says, so that's what I'm teaching, okay?"

The kid glares at him, ignoring all of his classmates' looks. "But if it's not true, what's the point?!" the kid demands, and David has no idea why he's taking this so personally.

"Look," David says, "if you want to have this discussion, come to my office hours. But this will be on your midterm, and your final. So can I get on with it, please?"

"Fine," the kid mutters, crossing his arms and sitting back in his chair. He doesn't take a single note for the rest of class.

When the kid shows up at his office hours, David bites back a curse. "Dr. Conrad, I'm not sure you remember me – I'm Matthew Adamson," the kid says politely, hovering in the doorway.

"Yes, Mr. Adamson, I remember you," David says. "Please, have a seat."

They argue for the better part of an hour, and Matthew brings up several points David's never quite thought of like that. Finally, David says, "This! This is how you should speak in class. Don't just flat out refuse to listen – _guide_ the discussion. Alright?"

"Yes, Dr. Conrad," Matthew says, ducking his head.

David asks, "This is your passion, isn't it? And it's killing you being in a 1001 class."

Matthew nods without looking up. "I couldn't just skip the general studies, and I missed the deadline for testing out," he mutters petulantly.

David chuckles. "Think of this as an easy A, son. And stop trying to derail the units."

"Yes, sir," Matthew says, recognizing the dismissal and rising to his feet. "I'll see you in class on Monday."

.

Matthew still argues in class, but he also gets the other students involved, raising issues and demanding explanations. It's the most fun David has had with his beginner class in _years_. He's pretty sure that, given a few years, Matthew will revolutionize the field.

At the end of the semester, David writes, _Thanks for all the food for thought_, on Matthew's final and looks forward to the kid's future.


	101. the sum of damages done to them

Title: the sum of damages done to them

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Adrienne Rich

Warnings: mentions of minor character death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG  
Wordcount: 80

Point of view: third

Prompt: any, any, 3 mistakes they've made and the 1 thing everyone except them thinks was a mistake

* * *

1

"You know what I was? Death. Death on a horse," he spits, knowing that admitting to it is a mistake. He's the best liar there ever was; he could've gotten out of this.

But he's so damn tired of pretending to be something he's not.

2

Okay, so drinking eighteen barrels of beer and defacing the pyramid was a mistake. What of it? It was _fun_.

3

MacLeod's sword swings. Kronos falls.

_Oh, my brother_, Methos thinks.

& 1

He rides the pale horse.


	102. the sound of God walking

Title: the sound of God walking

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: mentions of violence/death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 340

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos/any, everyone dies

* * *

Here's a spoiler for you: everyone dies at the end.

.

He does not remember his first life. Probably not the second through twentieth, either. Time did not matter, then. The sun rose, the sun set, people died. People thirsted, they hungered, they hunted and they fucked, they gave birth and left their dead to rot beneath the sun, to be scavenged by the animals salivating just out of reach.

Life was hard, then. And while it has become far more pleasurable, all the years since, some things are still just as hard.

People have always died.

.

A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million, millions upon billions – he does not know how many lives were extinguished through his direct intervention. Does it matter? They would have died, anyway.

Of course he doesn't regret it. How can he? He's what all immortals are, what all humans have the potential to be.

He's just the best at it.

.

Air conditioning. The internet. Indoor plumbing. If asked, those are his favorite things civilization has invented.

(The wheel. Language. Stories.)

.

Here's a spoiler for you: no one can run forever.

.

He has loved many, and killed more. He has hunted nations down to their last citizen. He has built cities and raised monuments. He has taught and tortured and trained and triumphed. He has hidden for decades and strode boldly through the streets. He is a legend, a story, a myth.

He's just a guy. At the end, he is only a man.

.

Here's a spoiler for you: in the end, there can be only one.

.

The sun rises; his sword glints in the light, and his teeth are bared in a smile.

He does not remember his first life, or even his hundredth. There have been thousands, five thousand years – oh, so many more. He is the oldest thing on the planet.

"Well?" he calls, laughing.

.

Here's a spoiler for you: everyone dies at the end. The pale rider rides on, astride the great horse, and the sun sets.

People always die.


	103. Sunlight on a broken column

Title: Sunlight on a broken column

Disclaimer: not my character; title from TS Eliot

Warnings: none

Rating: PG  
Wordcount: 95

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Mythos, I don't have the slightest clue when my birthday is

* * *

Each of his identities has a different birthday, and a different way of celebrating it. Adam Pierson goes out drinking with his mates; the life before that, he stayed in to sketch.

When was his first birthday? It was before years were invented, before months had been thought up, before days had names. It was before time had meaning.

Ask him and he'll lie, of course.

What he knows is this: he was born with the dawn, opening his eyes after his first death to a light creeping across the sky. Does anything matter but that?


	104. amongst the stars

Title: amongst the stars

Disclaimer: not my character

Warnings: far in the future

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 90

Point of view: third

Any SF/F fandom, Eldorado to the Moon, Michael Nesmith

* * *

Humanity has come a long way, he thinks, watching the stars through the window. A long way indeed.

There are so few of his kind left, and none of the young ones (well, the _youngest_ ones) know how it once felt to gaze at the night sky and wonder.

Wonders are commonplace in a life where planets are merely a few weeks' ride away. There are no wonders left, truly.

He remembers it well; three centuries of interstellar travel is nothing compared to the sixty that came before it.


	105. end of an age

Title: end of an age

Fandom: Highlander

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: talk of violence/death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 295

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, Meeting his younger self wouldn't be so bad except for how many younger selves he was so happy to leave behind.

* * *

Methos at 1000 was enamored with mortals, with their mayfly lives.

Methos at 2000 was experimenting with death, learning all the ways there were to kill.

Methos at 3000 was relearning how to live, how to blend, how to rule from the shadows.

Methos at 4000 was traveling, seeing the far corners of the world that were yet unexplored.

Methos at 5000 was mastering technology, enthralled with what the internet would become.

Methos at 6000 –

"I remember this," he tells the child, barely 500 and still so wild.

The child glares at him, grubby fingers around a sharpened rock. "We survive," he tells the child gently. "We grow so much stronger. And we will always have another day."

He speaks a language not yet created in the child's world; but he will remember, and he will understand the words one day.

Methos at 500 was mad, angry at existence and helpless to do anything about it. Methos at 6000 is the most powerful person in the world.

"I will send you back," he tells the child. "But know that one day you will be where I am – one day, we will have the stars at our command."

The child's fingers clench on the rock; Methos murmurs the incantation, sending him back to the fertile plain of their youth.

A very long time ago, Methos looked upon himself in fear and in wonder, and he did not understand for millennia. The Game had not yet been invented and Methos had thought himself alone, the only one to die and then live again.

He rises to his feet and strides to the window, looking out over his empire. He is a benevolent ruler; very few people even know they live by his will alone.

The Game is won.


	106. of choices

Title: of choices

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: major character death

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 100

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander, Methos, dilemma

* * *

It comes down to his life or Duncan's. That is a choice to which he has always known his only decision.

It comes down to Duncan in the line of fire and Methos able to shove him out, to take his place – but Methos does not move. Of course not.

There are many things Methos will never be forgiven for, should there actually be a final reckoning on the other side. He never plans on seeing that other side.

Duncan falls, an endless barrage of bullets severing his head.

Methos watches with a tiny shred of regret – then he runs.


	107. shadowborn

Title: shadowborn

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: none

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 100

Prompt: any, any, A fool can be crowned a King

* * *

Only fools want to wear the crown and sit on the throne. Methos has ruled more nations than any other, and he has sat on the throne and been put into history a mere once - and died when revolution came. He learned.

True power is being _behind_ the throne, whispering into the ear of royalty and commoner alike, sowing seeds and reaping what grows.

No, only fools want the people to see them, to bow at their feet, to cower and worship and rise.

History, after all, is the killing of kings. Who knows that better than the record keeper?


	108. expecting the unexpected

Title: expecting the unexpected

Fandom: Highlander/Supernatural

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: AU

Pairings: none

Rating: PG  
Wordcount: 355

Point of view: third

Prompt: Highlander/Supernatural, Methos & Castiel (& Jimmy), Jimmy was raised by Methos

Note: I figured a Jimmy raised by Methos wouldn't be all that good of a Christian, if he was a Christian at all. So no Amelia and no Claire, meaning Jimmy's the last possible vessel for Castiel.

* * *

The first time the angel speaks to him, he listens, waits for the angel to leave, and then he calls Dad. His on his fifth time around the country, recording people's stories, writing three different books (two fictional, one about the history of locomotion), while Dad is off pretending to be a college kid again, avoiding the Highlander (and weren't those years _fun_ because Adam Pierson was an only child and Jimmy was too old to be his kid).

But even though Jimmy's all grown up now, even though he's out on his own and seeing the world, Dad had promised him that he could always call if he ever needed help, or just to talk, or anything.

So he does. He says, "Dad, either I'm going crazy or angels are real."

Dad's quiet for a long moment, and then he asks, "Where are you?"

.

Angels are real. Dad _hates_ them.

When the angel comes back, Dad's with him, and Dad announces, "The boy won't be saying yes to you."

The angel demands an explanation; when Jimmy goes to answer, Dad glares at him. The angel promises that Jimmy won't come to harm, that he will be protected and honored among all men.

Dad flat-out _laughs_. "If your only choice is Jimmy," he says, "then you'll take me."

The angel - recoils. Jimmy glances at Dad and Dad's smiling. "Yes, I thought that'd be your reaction. But the boy is mine, you understand, and what's mine is beyond touch. So you'll take me or you'll be without a vessel for what's ahead."

The angel slips into Dad like little shards of light while Jimmy's demanding, "Dad, what are you doing?"

"Do not be afraid," the angel says with Dad's voice. "Of all of humanity, the oldest shall be safe."

"What?" Jimmy says, getting in-between Dad's body and the door. "How do you know that?"

The angel smiles at him. "Because his father is Death," the angel says, and then he's gone in a rush of wings.

Jimmy spends the next hour trying to call Dad on the phone, but there's never an answer.


	109. it is your own soul you destroy

Title: it is your own soul you destroy

Disclaimer: only "Matt" isn't mine; title from Denise Levertov

Warnings: very post-series

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 355

Point of view: third

Prompt: any, any, the worst monster is the one in the mirror

* * *

Matt Bennison is weird. That's what his roommate Kyle says, anyway, when he joins their study group. Elise and Monty want to hear more, but Matt arrives (late, of course, because he's never on time ever) with notes from his meeting with Dr. Oliver, and so Yvette shushes them all because Matt is so soft spoken.

Kyle, Elise, and Monty go out for drinks after the studying is done. Elise thinks Matt's quietness is a mask for something wild and dangerous (but she also thinks _her_ roommate is Kali reincarnated, and everyone [including the roommate] is pretty sure that's not true), and Monty doesn't like that Matt sometimes makes proclamations about something without being able to back it up.

Matt's a good guy, though, everyone knows that. Just… weird. Kyle tells them about Matt talking in a dozen different languages in his sleep, the sword he hides in the back of the closet, the notebooks full of scribbles in a language no one in the language department could identify, and how _terrifying_ Matt was when Kyle returned with pictures of those notebooks.

But the thing Kyle doesn't tell them, the thing he knows would convince them because nothing else has – Matt never looks in the mirror. Never. In the five months they've been rooming together in the dorms, Matt has avoided the mirror.

Who does that? What does it mean? Google and the psychology department weren't much help beyond it being a "bad sign," which, no shit, he already knew that.

And sometimes, late at night, Matt cries. He's an orphan and an only child, so Kyle doesn't talk about his own family in case that's insensitive, and Matt doesn't have any pictures of any loved ones or friends. He came alone and he's still mostly alone, and Kyle – Kyle doesn't want to be his friend. Because Matt… he's just so cold sometimes. Like he thinks it's all pointless, like he thinks they're all nothing, and this is just – Kyle doesn't even know, but he doesn't like Matt.

And by Matt never looking in the mirror… Kyle's pretty sure Matt doesn't like Matt, either.


End file.
